Cant install win2k (or can't get partition working?)

[hyperphate]

So I used Partition Magic 5 to remove my win98 FAT32 partition and I created an NTFS one and set it as active. So i have NTFS + FAT32.

So I'm trying to install W2K to the NTFS...

I boot with a Win98 start up disk, load SmartDrv, go to the CDROM, run WINNT.exe, it copies the files (to my remaining FAT32 partition, not the NTFS), tells me to remove my disk , and it reboots.

But the computer cannot boot from the hard disk. Is this only because tehre are no system files? or maybe it is not formatted? If there were no system files wouldn't it show 'Non system disk error' or something similar?

Also, I cannot boot from the W2k CD or find the BOOTDisk folder.

 

[Joemonkey]

This may be helpful as far as getting the CD-ROM to boot (worked like a charm for me).

and if you don't have a BOOTDISK directory on your CD, then thats just weird.

 

[yazz]

is the NTFS partition the first partition on the harddrive?

if it is not and you set the NTFS partition as active the system will not boot because the active partition should contain the first sector on the harddrive to boot from.

have you gone into the bios and set the boot order of your system? make sure your CDROM drive is the first boot device in the BIOS.
also... try a winnt.exe /? --read what it has to say and apply the correct switch to make boot disks. Partition Magic 5 is something i do not trust when making partitions. i either use fdisk or the NT4/win2k partition manager on install or the disk manager in nt4/win2k.

 

[Ender78]

OOPS, wrong thread

 

[patrickj]

You might want to make sure that the size of the partition that you are installing the OS on does not exceed 8Gb. Both NT4 and Win2k won't work if the boot partition is greater that 8.7Gb. I use 8Gb instead of what Microsoft says because each the bios translation is different on different systems. Besides, 8Gb is a nice round number. There are a few TechNet articles about this. You should be able to find them at http://technet.microsoft.com by searching on boot partition.

 

[obenton]

My wife's computer's w2k system/boot partition is 20GB and it works fine.