NTFS question - max number of files on root of C:?

I always thought that NTFS did away with limitations on the number of files
you can have in the root directory. Today I had a user that couldn't boot up
to Win2K, the box just sits there with a blinking cursor before the normal
splash screen has a chance to come up, and I figured the hard drive might
have gotten hosed, so I mounted the drive as a slave (E in another
computer to see if I could recover any data. When I went to the root of E:
there were exactly 2,048 files there, mostly .csv and .txt files from data
downloads from the past 3 or 4 years, in addition to the normal system
files and app logs. Apparently somebody told this person that this is where
she should put all of her data files. These were all one-off files that
weren't needed anymore so I was able to blow them out and remount the drive
as the master and Win2K boots normally again. The number 2,048 is an exact
multiple of 4 times the 512 limit in FAT... no way this could just be a
coincidence! I Googled this but couldn't find anything that points to a
2,048 file limit on NTFS. Not that this is a big deal or anything that we're
likely to see again, but now I"m really curious.

"keith w" <not DeleteThis @this.net> wrote in message
news:CJudne3rA6NmzpzanZ2dnUVZ_rmjnZ2d@giganews.com...
>I always thought that NTFS did away with limitations on the number of files
>you can have in the root directory. Today I had a user that couldn't boot
>up to Win2K, the box just sits there with a blinking cursor before the
>normal splash screen has a chance to come up, and I figured the hard drive
>might have gotten hosed, so I mounted the drive as a slave (E in another
>computer to see if I could recover any data. When I went to the root of E:
>there were exactly 2,048 files there, mostly .csv and .txt files from data
>downloads from the past 3 or 4 years, in addition to the normal system
>files and app logs. Apparently somebody told this person that this is where
>she should put all of her data files. These were all one-off files that
>weren't needed anymore so I was able to blow them out and remount the drive
>as the master and Win2K boots normally again. The number 2,048 is an exact
>multiple of 4 times the 512 limit in FAT... no way this could just be a
>coincidence! I Googled this but couldn't find anything that points to a
>2,048 file limit on NTFS. Not that this is a big deal or anything that
>we're likely to see again, but now I"m really curious.
>

I observe no such limit on my NTFS drive. Why don't you run some
tests yourself? The following command will attempt to create 5000 files:

for /L %a in (1,1,5000) do @echo. > c:\test%a.txt