?how to install/problems NT4 on 45GB hard drive

[econ0013 0]

I am trying to install NT4 iether as single or dual boot (with 95 or 98 - have 'upgrade' NT4) on a 45 GB IBM ATA100 hard drive; I keep getting error/go away messages during setup even though the primary partition is formatted as fat 16 - also it wont let me convert to ntfs during setup. I need to stick with NT4 as I dont have drivers and half my programs dont work in win2K.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[econ0013 0]

forgot to mention - board is KT7A+R; can I get around it using the raid setup any way?

[Bursar 0]

You can't have a boot partition larger than 4GB with Windows NT.

 

Depending on how you want to configure your PC, you're probably better off going for the 4GB partition and then using the rest as a D drive, or even splitting it into a number of other smaller partitions.

[econ0013 0]

My boot partition is 1GB; and it is still giving me these problems

[Pikey 0]

Hi

 

2 questions:

 

What OS are you upgrading NT4 from?

 

&

 

Are you patching the install with the SP4 IDE large disk driver?

 

Cheers

[econ0013 0]

I am upgrading from 95 but have tried it and can upgrade from 98 but same results. Even using a clean install to the 1GB fat 16 primary (boot) partition using the three setup floppy discs still gives error message.

The partitions are as follows

1GB-fat 16

2GB-fat 16

2GB-fat 16

2GB-fat 16

some unpartitioned space

(about) 16GB-fat32

(about) 12GB-NTFS

Have partition magic6 to redo partitions

 

I can not get far enough to install service packs, get error messages before first reboot during setup.

Thanks

[Pikey 0]

Upgrading to NT4 from Windows 95/98?

 

Herein lies your problem:- It's not supported. You'll need NT 3.51 or earlier (or Windows for Workgroups) to make the upgrade.

 

There may be a crack for this out there but i don't have it.

 

Let me be sure you have this right - You have an Upgrade copy of NT4, not the full version?

[econ0013 0]

It behaves like teh full version ie will do a vanilla install from teh 3 floppies but will also happily install as an upgrade - I usually run a triple boot system 95,NT4 and 2K 9for experimental purpoises only) based on its boot loader and it is quite happy with it with installation in that order.

[Bursar 0]

Microsoft recommends that during the install, you only create the boot partition.

 

In this case, remove all partitions from your disk, and during the setup only create the 1GB partition that you want for your boot drive.

 

Once NT is installed, you can then mess about with the other partitions.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bursar:
Microsoft recommends that during the install, you only create the boot partition.

In this case, remove all partitions from your disk, and during the setup only create the 1GB partition that you want for your boot drive.

Once NT is installed, you can then mess about with the other partitions.</font>

Especially since the later service packs in NT provide for NTFS 5 and better hard disk driver support. I setup one 2GB partition, get the install done and up to SP6a, then create another partition out of the rest of the drive (usually in 4KB clusters, as opposed to the 512B size you get during setup).



------------------
Regards,

clutch

[Pikey 0]

Hi again,

 

Are you multi-booting here, or are you after a full NT install on this 45GB drive?

 

If you want NT setup to recognise the full disk you need to patch the install with the SP4 ATAPI.SYS file. You can find this at:

 

ftp://microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-unsup-ed/fixes/nt40/atapi/ATAPI.EXE

 

Either that or search out knowledge base article "Q197667 - Installing Windows NT on a large IDE Hard Disk"

 

I believe that the max boot partition can only be 8GB here, but it may help.

 

I'm guessing that you know this already anyway re: your multi boot system previously.

 

Cheers

[econ0013 0]

Thanks everyone - replacing the atapi.sys on both the floppies and/or the cd did the trick. I am now happily multibooting OS's again.