NT4 Workstation installation problems with Dual Boot system

[Lorne Gibbs]

I have a m/c with Windows 98 already installed, I have installed Partition
Magic 5.01 and split the 6GB drive into 5.5GB for Win98 & 0.5GB for WinNT4
Installation, the 0.5GB partition is at the front and FAT formatted and is
the active partition, when m/c is rebooted with NT4 Boot disk inserted, it
goes through the normal procedure, asking for Disk 2 & 3, finds ATAPI CD-ROM
& IDE drivers, all ok, but then it fails right at the end saying there is no
valid MS-DOS partition available to install NT4 ! any ideas?

--

Mr. Lorne Gibbs
E-mail: l.g...@blueyonder.co.uk
ICQ: 12227860

[Bruce Thornbury]

What type of partition is the 0.5 GB portion of your disk?

Bruce

"Lorne Gibbs" <l.g...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:dmgf5.576$465....@news3.cableinet.net...> I have a m/c with Windows

[Lorne Gibbs]

primary

--

Mr. Lorne Gibbs
E-mail: l.g...@blueyonder.co.uk
ICQ: 12227860

Bruce Thornbury <bruce.t...@longairdox.com> wrote in message
news:#wVHQ9j9$GA.261@cppssbbsa05...

[Jessie]

Windows NT will not install on a FAT 32 partition. If your c:\ drive is
FAT32, It needs to write files to your C: drive and if it is FAT 32 it will
fail. I don't think 500mb is enough room for an NT installation. I could be
wrong, but I would use a minimun of 2 gig. You are going to need room for a
swapfile, and I assume some apps.
hth
jo

Lorne Gibbs <l.g...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message

news:p1if5.967$465....@news3.cableinet.net...

[Rob Stow]

Just do a new NT install, and this time delete the half gig
partition, recreate it in the same space, then let NT's
install program do the formatting.

Chances are that if you created and formatted your current
two partitions at the same time with either Win95 or Win98
you unintentionally formatted the first one as FAT32 rather
than FAT16. The Win95/98 procedure for selecting which
file system to use is idiotic and many people wind up with
FAT32 partitions they don't want simply because they are
never specifically asked which file system to use. The closest
thing you get to a hint is the "do you want to enable support
for large hard drives" question when you run the Win95/98 fDisk.

Rob

[B. Tupper]

I have made several successful NT4.0 installations in .5 Gb partitions.
It gets a bit crowded if you add a lot of utilities in, but the basic
NT4.0 installation works fine in that space.

Ben

[Ben Price]

I have a similar problem, but am using a large disc that I want to
multi-boot to four different operating systems. The disc size is 30.6 GB.
The four operating sys are W98, NT4.0 Workstation, NT4.0 Server and WK2
Professional.

If am partitioning the disc as follows

c: 0.5 gb FAT
d: 1.5 gb
e: 3.0 gb
f: 6.0 gb
g: 19.0 gb FAT32

I format the system patition c: as FAT, and g: as FAT32, and load W98 onto
g:

I then want to load NTWKSTN, NTSVER and WK2 Prof on d: to e:

I get the error message as with the below message.

I have also found out that you need the ATAPI driver from NT service pack 4,
in order for NT to recognise HDDs over 8.4 GB. Has anyone actually installed
the above successfully? If I install W98 and 2000, the PC dual boots ok.
It's only when installing NT4.0 that I encounter probs.

Regards

Ben

[B. Tupper]

What are you putting in the 500 Mb C: partition? Ordinarily it wouldn't
need to be nearly that big. And you didn't say what you are putting in
partition F:. I'd make C: real small to boot from and add the extra
space to partition D:, then distribute WKS, SVR and W2K between D: E:
and F:. That would avoid any potential conflicts from having
workstation and server in the same partition.

As for the ATAPI.SYS file, I've had best success in copying the entire
i386 directory to the hard drive, overwriting the existing ATAPI.SYS
with the new one, then doing a "winnt /b" installation from the hard
drive. That way the new ATAPI.SYS is already integrated, and you don't
have to to through the "other mass storage" finding routine.

Ben Tupper

[netw...@911networks.com]

See: http://www.911networks.com > Windows NT >
Installation > How to install NT on a large
hard-drive [greater than 7.8 GB]? To dual boot
with Windows 95/98.

See: http://www.911networks.com > Windows NT >
Configuration > How to add Windows 98 to a machine
with already Windows NT Workstation without
reinstalling everything?

See: http://www.911networks.com > Windows NT >
Configuration > Steps needed to support drives
larger than 8Gb.

On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 13:11:37 GMT, "Lorne Gibbs"
<l.g...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

>I have a m/c with Windows 98 already installed, I have installed Partition
>Magic 5.01 and split the 6GB drive into 5.5GB for Win98 & 0.5GB for WinNT4
>Installation, the 0.5GB partition is at the front and FAT formatted and is
>the active partition, when m/c is rebooted with NT4 Boot disk inserted, it
>goes through the normal procedure, asking for Disk 2 & 3, finds ATAPI CD-ROM
>& IDE drivers, all ok, but then it fails right at the end saying there is no
>valid MS-DOS partition available to install NT4 ! any ideas?

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[Cham]

Hi, I have a similar configuration running,

13 gb HD

1 primary (active)
1 extended split into logical drives

c:- 1.4 - W98 fat16
d:- 1.4 - NT4 Server fat16
e-g various for apps and data fat16
h:- fat32
i:- W2K fat16
L: NTFS - just to play with file permissions in NT4 Server

I initially had huge problems installing NT4 server because when I used fdisk I
selected Y at the large disk support prompt. When I selected N and so formatted
with fat16 it worked much better.

Another problem you may have is with your CD-Rom drives - I could never get NT4
to load when I chose to detect mass storage devices. I also tried the /b
switch, but the installation failed at the end.

What I had to do was specify the directory the files were coming from (on the
hard drive - after copying I386), specify the temp directory, ignore the mass
storage option then load the CD-Roms from the SCSI Adapter option in Control
Panel.

I get an Event message each time NT4 starts saying Atdisk.sys failed to start,
but it doesn't seem to affect anything else, so I ignore it. I'm guessing
that's because there's some conflict between my IDE HDD, my DVD (CD in NT) and
my IDE CDRW.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Cham

Ben Price wrote:

> > > news:dmgf5.576$465....@news3.cableinet.net...> I have a m/c with

> Windows
> > > 98 already installed, I have installed Partition
> > > > Magic 5.01 and split the 6GB drive into 5.5GB for Win98 & 0.5GB for
> > WinNT4
> > > > Installation, the 0.5GB partition is at the front and FAT formatted
> and
> > is
> > > > the active partition, when m/c is rebooted with NT4 Boot disk
> inserted,
> > it
> > > > goes through the normal procedure, asking for Disk 2 & 3, finds ATAPI
> > > CD-ROM
> > > > & IDE drivers, all ok, but then it fails right at the end saying there
> > is
> > > no
> > > > valid MS-DOS partition available to install NT4 ! any ideas?
> > > >