W2K kicking my butt, somebody get my back!

[Headcheese]

Here is the story:
I build a new rig (see specs in my sig) Throw in my Win2K disk and install it great, except, it would not let me set my partitions like I wanted. So, I get everything up and going and the fact my 80 gig HD is one big huge partition eats away at me until I decide to Fdisk it like I want and re set it up. Well, after Fdisk, it won't even let me install W2k. Says "must be run under Win32" so Im lost. I re install 98SE, then upgrade to Win2K. No dice. The installer says it cannot read my HD, then It can't read my installation CD and the upgrade fail. So, I re fdisk, to one big huge partition and it takes it like and the upgrade installs w/o a hitch. Then Win2K looses my DVD and CD-RW and won't load the drivers. I did everything to try to get them back, but no dice. I had to do it all over.

I want my partitions, I want win2K. Why is this not working, and what can I do about it?

HELP!

[corosus]

what kind of partition is your primary partition???? fat, fat 32 or ntfs??? since you installed win98 se i assume it's not ntfs, and looking at the eroor message you got i assume it isn't fat32 either. . win 2K will rruin under both fat32 and ntfs, however it runs more stable, in my experience, under ntfs. I recommend you change your primary partion to ntfs or at least to fat32.
at anny rate upgrading from 98 to 2K is in most cases a recepie for chaos, IMHO a clean istall is alwaays the way to go if you have the option
i hope this solves your problem
good luck

[Headcheese]

I tried to convert the partition to ntfs, cause thats what i want, but it never gets to that stage. I tried a clean install, no dice either, same error.

The first time i upgraded to 2000, on my old system, I had no problem whatsoever. The first time I did on this setup, I had no problem. I just can't figure out what is causeing this thing ti hang like this?

[pillainp]

Try it this way:

1. FDISK and remove all your current partitions, which from your statements appear to be FAT of some sort.
2. Enter BIOS and set to boot from CD.
3. Place Win2K CD in drive and boot from it.
4. When it gets to the screen asking what size you want your partition to be, clear the field (which will show all available space) usnig the Backspace key and enter the size you want your partition to be, in Megabytes.
5. In the next screen, choose to format as NTFS.

Win2K should take care of the rest of the installation and give you no trouble at all. IMHO, if you want the stability and security that Win2K can give you, you need to run it on NTFS.

Alternatively, you could FDISK to create a single primary partition of the size you need and then set it active. Now boot off the Win2K CD and select this partition to install to and choose to format as NTFS.

Once Win2K is up and running, you can use the Logical Disk Manager to create and format partitions on the rest of your HDD (log in as Administrator, Rightclick My Computer and choose Manage).
I have installed W2K Pro and Server on numerous machines and never ever had a problem.

Hope you find this helpful.

PS: You cannot convert the partition that Win2K is installed on from FAT to NTFS while the OS is running.

[pillainp]

If your Win2K CD is not bootable or you cannot boot off it, you can create boot floppies by running the Makeboot.exe program in the Bootdisk directory. You will need four clean formatted floppies for the purpose. You can then boot off the floppies, and then just follow the instructions.

[Headcheese]

Well,
I got it done. I fdisked the whole drive, and did a FROMATC:/S as I'd read elswhere on this board, the ran the WINNT.EXE from the I386 file in DOS. This worked. I still have to choose my OS in the boot screen, but I just installed W2K on the whole drive, then resized it with PartitionMagic to 10%. Im gonna do my other partitions later thatway.

Can you tell me how to get the system to just boot to W2K w/o asking me?

[pointd]

Press Windows and Pause/Break key together. This brings up the System Properties dialog box. Click the Advanced tab and then Startup and Recovery button. Make sure the correct OS is listed as default and remove the tick from "Display list of operating systems for xx seconds". Ok everything and you're done.

[pillainp]

I was writing the reply to this, but you beat me to it, pointd, and you have the easier route. Kudos.

---

What exactly does the boot menu say? If it gives you the option of booting into either DOS or Win2K, do the following:
1. Boot into Win2K as Administator.
2. Open My Computer and Select Tools>Folder Options.
3. In the View pane, check "Show hidden files and folders" "Hide extensions for known file types" and uncheck "Hide protected and operating system files". Click Apply and then OK to close the dialog.
4. Do a search in the root of C: for a file called Boot.ini and edit it with Notepad. Save a copy of this file and then open the original as "bootini.old".

5. In the line where it says default=, see if there is any other wording than the folowing: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT. If there is, delete it and replace it with the above text.

6. In the [Operating Systems] section, delete everything and then paste the following: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect.

7. Save the file and close.

8. Reboot the machine.

The system should now boot straight to Win2K without a boot menu.

BTW: There is no need to do a Format c:/s to prepare a Hard drive partition for installation of Win2k. This command only loads the DOS operating system files to the HDD boot sector and is the reason that you are getting this boot menu problem, as the system has a choice of either booting into DOS or into Win2K. This command is only really needed to install Windows 9x from a folder on the HDD.

---

[techead]

W98 can't see NTFS W2K can see fat, fat16, fat32, and NTFS the only way to run NTFS and fat32 is dual boot

[Headcheese]

Thanks guys
Man, I sure am lovin me some Win2K with mulitple partitions! My new system is lookin like I had invisioned