Help! Installing Win 2k as dualboot with Win98SE. Cannot get beyond the text portion of the Win 2k installation.

[Wirehead]

I am currently using Win98SE and I am running out of resources all the time. I have a Matrox Marvel G450 dual head in my AGP slot and a G450 PCI in a PCI slot on my ASUS P3v4x mobo. I said "in the process of" because I have been at it for 5 days and I cannot get it to install all the way. I have hit about 10 different errors and they each tell you to do 4 or 5 different things to the BIOS or Virus software or other programs. No reccomendation seems to work for me. I am trying to install Win 2000 on a brand new Maxtor Diamond Plus 60, 40 gig hard drive. My Drive C: has Win98SE installed on two 20 gig Maxtor Diamond Plus 40 hard drives set up under RAID 0 with a Promise card. Now supposedly Windows 2000 will not install on a harddrive over 32 gigs unless you partition the drive smaller which I have done, or use the NTFS file system, or use third party software to partition the drive. I want to use FAT 32 since I want to share some files with my current Win 98 SE. I am installing Win 2000 as a dual boot system. I read that you should not use the fdisk and format utility that comes with Windows 2000. You should use the DOS version of fdisk and format instead. But neither work in my case. I even tried to format and partition my drive with Partition Magic, but Windows 2000 refused to install on it. I have changed all my BIOS settings to default, I have disabled all my cache setting and disabled all shadowing. I am running with the latest BIOS version and have run two anti virus applications before I started. I have also done about a dozen more things as suggested by Microsoft but this thread is getting too long. Basically I cannot go beyond the text portion of the Win 2000 installation. It took me 2.5 weeks of work to install Win 98SE on my rig so I am not doing too badly yet. I finally had to trick it by installing Win 98SE on the correct hard drive in another computer than switch it to my current rig and it reloaded all the drivers and it worked just fine. I cannot do this with Win 2000 as none of my other computers have ACPI as they are all older. Win 2000 must have that to install. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
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[TomBilliodeaux]

Wirehead,
If this is correct:"Basically I cannot go beyond the text portion of the Win 2000 installation. It took me 2.5 weeks of work to install Win 98SE on my rig so I am not doing too badly yet",
Then I am wondering what is going on with your bios and hdd setup.

Normally W98 installs in 25 minuts not 2.5 weeks.
W2k took me 25 minutes for a basic install and another 25 for driver stuff.

I think you have other issues.
It may help to get rid of any virus protection for the install. Also turn off your virus protect in bios for the install if that is a problem (was not for me).

I don't know about the raid and how that interacts. Maybe someone who has RAID setup may care to comment.

W2k will set up its on boot menu for 98 and 2k and other Window o/s's.

 

[Wirehead]

Thanks for your response. I will try your suggestions.

 

[obenton]

Check on whether the w2k boot files, which will be located on C:\, will install and work on a striped volume.

 

[Wirehead]

obenton

I appreciate your help. Can you tell me how to do what you just suggested please. Thank you very much. If this is relevant I am not trying to install Win 2K on the RAID 0 dirve which is the C: drive, I am trying to install it on Drive D: a new 40 gig hard drive.

Tom

I deleted both virus packages I had and disabled the Boot sector virus scan in the BIOS, but I still get errors in trying to install. Any other suggestions. Thanks.

 

[Wirehead]

I have gotten to the point where all the setup files are loaded on Drive D:. Then Win2k initializes the Win2k configuration and loads information from hivesys.inf, hivesft.inf, hivecls.inf, wsh.inf, dmreg.inf. Then it says to remove the disk in Drive A:. Well there never was a disk in Drive A. I am booting via the CD ROM as modified in the BIOS. So I do not know if it means to remove the CD from the CD ROM or not. The computer reboots and there is three ways for it to boot but it does not complete the setup regardless which way I boot it. The first prompt when it boots after the first couple of screens is to go back to the CD ROM. If I do, it just starts the whole process over again and reinstalls from the start. If I do not prompt it to boot from the CD ROM then it goes after a couple of other screens to the dual boot menu installed by Win2k that gives me the option to go to Win98SE or to Continue with the Win 2k Setup. If I choose Win 2k setup it starts the whole process over again from scratch as if I had booted a second time to the CDROM, but the CDROM light is not flickering. It must be loading from Drive C:. If I choose to boot to Win98SE, it goes there, but it does not continue to do the Win 2k setup.

What do I do now. Can someone please tell me how to get to the next step. If I look at D: drive all the files seem to be installed there. Thanks for your help.

 

[Shuja]

At this stage change the BIOS setting and disable the booting through CDROM, it may work

 

[Wirehead]

Shuja

Thanks for the reply. I will try that.

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

I am having similar problems right now. I decided to finally convert over to Win2K last night, but it seems to be a "No-Go" with my FastTrak66. I refomatted my drives, so I am doing a clean install. I am using and ASUS P3V4X, FastTrak66 with two 20GB Maxtors in a RAID-0 setup. I dropped the fastrak drivers onto a floppy & tried to specify those drivers when it asks (Hit F6), but Win2K doesnt pick them up or recognize my HDDs at all.

I found a REALLY long complicated workaround on the Promise site that MAY or MAY NOT work...does anyone have an easy solution?

 

[richardnoggin]

Did you press f6 when the first blue screens appear after booting to the cd?
Even though you are trying to load 2k to other partitions, 2k has to access the raid array to load boot files.
2k must have Promise raid drivers to access the raid array.
If you watch the progress info at the bottom of the screen and press f6 to load 'Mass storage device drivers' when requested, it should stop a few seconds later and tell you to press 's' to specify the storage device drivers location (have a promise raid driver disk ready).
Also, though adaptec says dont use Part Magic on a stripe array, it seems to work ok once the primary and ext. partitions boundarys are defined (use fdisk to set up a small primary boot part. then set the rest of the array up as ext. dos then create your logical drives in Part Magic or Drive Image). Last nite I set up 3/20's in a stripe array, but I always keep system in data separate partitions(cant live with a 60 GB part).

 

[richardnoggin]

Bleeding Jawa, did you press 'ctl+f' when the ft66 is scanning? Did the array work in 98?

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

Mine gets to the part where it says press the "S" key, but when I do, it doesn't find the drivers on the floppy & says something about not finding the text.oem file or something.

 

[richardnoggin]

Is the driver compressed on the disk? Last nite was the first time I've done the raid, but I played with it four times with diff partitions and every time mine picked up the drivers on schedule.

 

[richardnoggin]

the driver that i used for my Ultra66 converted to FT66 is only 200k if you want me to email it, let me know

 

[Wirehead]

Bleeding Jawa

I have the exactly same setup as you. ASUS P3v4x, 2 Maxtor 20 gig hard drives setup in RAID 0 with Fasttrack 66. My drivers load fine but I still cannot complete installation.

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

Richardnoggin....are you using the "FT_Series_Driver_200B6" ???

That's the one I am trying to use. My card is flashed to BIO 1.30

I am about the dump my RAID all-together just to get this thing running...or go back to Win98, maybe.

:disgust:

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

I did find this link if you want to go to all this trouble, Wirehead:

http://www.promise.com/techsupport/Notes/windows_2000_rc2_installation_FT66.htm

 

[Wirehead]

Thanks.

 

[richardnoggin]

I used 'FT66D130b33.zip' 270mb available from Promise under FT66/drivers. This looks like an earlier version specifically for the FT66 and not the whole FT family, might make the difference.

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

richardnoggin: The alternate driver worked like a charm. I had to put it on a seperate disk, instead of on the boot disk, but this driver has the "textsetup.oem" file that I was missing.

I am just finishing up my Win2k setup as I type.

Thanks.

 

[Wirehead]

Can you attach that dirver file in an email please and send it to me at americanar@aol.com. This may be my problem also. Thank you very much.

 

[Bleeding Jawa]

Email sent...hope it works.

 

[Wirehead]

Thanks.

 

[Wirehead]

Bleeding Jawa

I am still not installed. When the computer starts booting and the Fasttrack66 BIOS comes up and stays on the screen about 5 seconds do you see version 1.08 or are you using a newer version. Thanks.

 

[Wirehead]

Bleeding Jawa

Please disregard my last message. I just reread the thread and saw that you already said that your using BIOS version 1.30. That may be my problem I will try to load the newer BIOS. Thanks.
I hope you finally got your going.