Windows 2000 Pro issue

Retro6 · 30 Oct 2021 at 16:19

I decided to get out one of my dual core 2 machines to see if it would take Windows 2000 but its taking forever to format the hard drive. I left it on to format for a whole hour and it only got to 2% so I turned it off and back on again because it shouldn't be taking this long.

The hard drive is fine its a 250 GB SATA drive. The RAM is 4 GB I checked the maximum system requirements online for Windows 2000 but I will be removing some of the RAM anyway to make it a bit more year 2000 compatible. The hard drive took Linux just fine about two months ago. Why is it taking so long to format? at this rate it take a month to install Windows 2000 service pack 4.

paradigm · 30 Oct 2021 at 17:59

Windows 2000 only has the slow format (full zero out), not a quick format during setup.

It’s not really an issue with an era correct 5-10GB disk.

Simplest solution is to format the disk as NTFS in XP (or from an XP boot/setup disk) first, then reboot into 2k setup.

Retro6 · 30 Oct 2021 at 18:10

Thanks for the info its finally finished formatting and Windows 2000 is installing. I may need some more help later to locate the chipset drivers for the motherboard if I struggle to find them.

Edit: yep as suspected I need to hunt for the motherboard drivers for the onboard audio and graphics and might not support Windows 2000. There are options if it doesn't.

Its a GIGABYTE GA-M61PME-S2P Motherboard.

Retro6 · 30 Oct 2021 at 21:42

The drivers on the gigabyte site never worked they don't even contain the video or graphics software. I don't know why people do this I'm sure its just to annoy people who are looking for drivers. I might have to end up searching for a cheap suitable GPU. The sound I can sort.

jellybeard999 · 31 Oct 2021 at 20:02

Have you tried the standard Nvidia nforce chipset drivers?

I think this looks the right one

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/40/en-us

Retro6 · 31 Oct 2021 at 20:46

jellybeard999 said:
Have you tried the standard Nvidia nforce chipset drivers?

I think this looks the right one

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/40/en-us

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Edit: This one never worked but oddly another driver did after doing some tweaks to Windows 2000 from Windows XP CD. Windows 2000 has the same kernel, I got the video driver to work. Just the audio to go now.

This PC had a few issues with the BIOS I managed to fix it with an update and I can actually play games on it and use it now. It doesn't shutdown when I click on shutdown, instead it restarts with no display on the monitor so thats the next problem to trouble shoot.

3 hours later I've got audio I finally found the correct audio driver. It just goes to show how much rubbish there is on the internet when it comes to hunting down drivers.

This dual core machine is almost a Windows 2000 retro PC I just have a bit more trouble shooting to do with some other issues and then I think I can say I saved a motherboard from going in the bin. Its working much better since I re flashed the BIOS and before that it was pretty much unusable. I'm amazed that I can play nearly all my old games on this.

As I've been digging deeper into Windows 2000 I have found a lot can be done with it. Its a pretty cool OS.