Windows 2000 abnormal behavior

Initially with Norton I had corrected some errors. It seemed solved, but I was wrong!
Unfortunately, even lightening WIndows, it is too heavy.
I'm I have installed Windows ME, on one CF and the other CF windows 98SE.
To prove the differences. WinME starts much faster than Win98SE.
Anyway I was wondering did you know the way to make Win98 and WinME recognize more than 128GB?
I would like to use 500GB external drives

FAT32 can only support up to 32GB volumes. The computer firmware has to support 48-bit LBA though for drives over 137GB to be readable. 9x's tools aren't 48-bit compatible, so if you scan disk a 500GB HDD it will probably break it.

With Windows 2000, the disc was read without problems. I found some unofficial patches to see more than 128GB. I installed it without problems. But the Removable Disk does not see it. In Device Manager, however, the USB disk is present.

Windows 2000 isn't 9x. Microsoft decided to limit FAT32 formatting in its driver despite its ability to support larger volumes. You basically need to change the FAT32 driver.

So why did they create this patch?
https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/windows-9x-hard-drive-patch.html
Also, someone managed to have more than 64GB recognized on WIndows 95. Unfortunately, this page does not give much information!
http://toastytech.com/guis/miscb2.html

Edited by NarakuITA 2022-10-12 11:57 PM

As I said, the subystem can support up to several TB, but Microsoft's driver implementation limits this

"nable48BitLBA concievably should work up to FAT32 addressing limit of 2048Gb (less one byte)"

The problem is that the disk does not appear in My Computer.
C drives and removable disks are listed. But not the 500GB drive. Note, for testing purposes, I formatted a 2GB removable disk in ntfs. Windows 98 recognized it, but obviously if I tried to access the drive, it would ask me for formatting. But at least the record appeared in the list!
Even if there are these problems, as you told me, even if the disk is not usable, it should appear in the list, and at least if one tries to use it, windows should either give you an error or ask you for formatting.
But this does not happen because the disc is not listed, it does not appear.

So let's leave this problem aside.
I have great news.
I have always used Windows 2000 on Fat32 and not Ntfs on your advice.
I remember the first time I installed Windows I formatted in Ntfs and windows was extremely slow.
You told me that the Fat32 was better, because it was lighter, more or less.
(I remember this particular, unless I remember correctly)
Anyway, I accidentally read on one site, that actually Ntfs is even better in speed and lightness than Fat32.
Then believing I did something wrong, I tried to install Win2000 on Ntfs again.
The result? I noticed a slight increase in windows speed and responsiveness.
I started optimizing everything, Virtual Memory, disabling non-essential services, eliminating the graphic effects of windows, etc., etc.
I installed all the programs I use and then I continued optimizing the PC with Norton, TuneUp Utilities (after using various optimization tools I was able, with TuneUP, to enable UDMA66 support, I had a further slight increase in writing speed and reading just over 14MB \ s, compared to have 13MB \ s initial, on a Chinese CF of unknown brand that reaches, as stated by the manufacturer, up to 15MB \ s, which then on win10 reaches 20MB \ s). I defragmented with Diskeeper and optimized the windows registry with NTRegOpt.
I have not performed any updates and I have not installed Wifi.
WIndows 2000 hasn't been so responsive it's fast! I am amazed.

Now, I know that by updating windows, it would become heavier, much heavier.
I was thinking. If I only install the minimum to browse, maybe I could solve this problem as well.
Now I know that the Boingo Wireless program requires at least IE5.5. I would like to avoid updating.
Do you know of a lighter program that works with IE5.0, so you can use Wifi?

EDIT:
I discovered the cause. Maybe it's not the updates (I'm not sure), I just installed the USB Wifi card and already from the windows start I notice that the processor works for a full minute from 100%. He didn't do this before.
Furthermore, during all Windows activity, the CPU has peaks of work between 50 and 100%, even if nothing is done.
How is it possible that installing a USB wifi card puts Windows 2000 under strain without doing anything?
I had to delete the device drivers and disable internet services.
Windows is back to the way it was before.

Edited by NarakuITA 2022-10-14 9:55 PM

NTFS is a lot heavier than FAT. It is a journalling file system,has security descriptors, error recovery, auditing, junctions, 8dot3 mapping and more. It can be faster and it can be slower in different circumstances. It is however a lot more stable and a lot harder to corrupt.

Disable 8dot3, which will give a small write performance improvement
Start Regedt32.exe and locate the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
Select the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation entry.

Set a value of 1 in the Data field.
Click OK and then exit Regedt32.
Restart your computer

Thanks for the clarity! I will disable that service. As for the WiFi card, do you have any idea why Windows behaves this way? And I only have installed the card drivers. Nothing else.

It's a driver or dependency incompatibility. It's either a faulting processor it an interrupt storm. It depends on what process is causing the CPU spike.

The offending process is winmgmt.exe, together with explorer.exe (the latter however works less than winmgmt)
Let's say winmgmt is the main cause.

Did you patch it? Did you try a different driver? Did you disable WMI's service?

Yes, if you remember, I had installed all the updates. That's why I thought it was so slow.
Now I have found that it is the simple fact of installing the device drivers. But I also don't rule out the heaviness of the updates. But I'm not sure about the latter.
I have disabled NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation (set to 1), but if WMI's service is something else, no. I have no idea what it is.
I can try to install updates only. Let's see if Windows remains I will read, as it is now or not.

Edited by NarakuITA 2022-10-15 4:51 PM