Crazy windows against me!!!

[bostonflunkie]

I am having strange problrms with wndows lately. First machine is 2kserver with lot of junk software, I can not open up properties of any of the HD, right click-->proprties doesn't do anything, I can do open and explore but no properties.
Second one is a simple win98 and I just can not install nt4, customer wants only nt, he does not want his kids playing games!! Well I thought 2 hours should do it, but noooo it is turning out to be a painful project. What happens is this; I inserted the NT4 CD, it prompts me to upgrade,all the good thing started happening until it comes to where it says, nt needs to start and after it restart comes to starting up winnt and everything stops, HD LED is on(not blinking) and nothing happens I left it for few hours, but nothing. I think it is having trouble starting windows, it has 500MB RAM and a 233 processor which should be fine. I have triied copying i386 to the hard drive, taking out everything from the system all the things involved in process of elimination.
What's going on????????
I am pulling my here, if any of you have any suggestion I will really appreciate it. Maybe, I need to get A+... jsut kidding

[geoscomp]

If you are using NT 4.0, it can only read a FAT partition, not a FAT32 partition..you might want to use fdisk info to see what your boot partition is..if you had win98 on there, there is a good chance that it's fat32..from what I understand, nt v 5.0 will see fat32 partitions.
On the 2k server, are you logged on as administrator?

[bostonflunkie]

Good point. I have already tried it partition the drive using NT partition, <2GB and FAT16.
Anyone else? please.

[Stalemate]

Are you authorized to do a clean install (right after formatting the drive), or do you have to upgrade Win98? Upgrades always have an element of uncertainty to them. My suggestion: start from scratch with the WinNT boot disks and wipe/format the drive completely to NTFS during the installation procedure.

Also, have you checked for hardware compliancy with NT4?

I recall there was a tool which could test and analyze your system to evaluate it's NT4-readyness, but I can't recall it's name off hand.

[bostonflunkie]

Done that. Still get stuck at restarting win NT. HCL checked out. Customer calims he had NT4 installed before, on the same HD. I am stumped. Need help.

[NooNoo]

Did you try removing all pci cards and installing with only 1 stick of ram, 1 floppy, 1 vid card and the hdd?

[Low_Level_Owl]

maybe fdisk /mbr

[bostonflunkie]

Done that few times!

[NooNoo]

Set PNP OS aware to NO in bios?

[bostonflunkie]

I don't know what is going on with this machine. I worked on this machine over the weekend. I could not install NT4.0 or even 2k pro. It get stuck at windows needs to restart to finish installing, from here it restart and menu pops up which OS, Win98 or setup of win2k when I select 2k, it starts up found RAM and processor and than just stay there; blue screen. The way I am installing is; I format the dirve, use a win98 start up disk and then use floppy for NT and/or win2k.
What is the best way to install 2k?
Tahnks.

[Tr!une]

In win2k (and probably relevant to NT since 2k uses NT technology, isn't that redundant?) if the PC locks up in the blue screen you are dealing with a hardware error. if it gets to the Win2k splash screen then it is starting the software. So you can be assured that you are running into a hardware error. I would try a different video card for starters.

Not sure why I say that other than I remember good old Win3.1 installs going fine until reboot. That ended up being a VesaLB driver issue. But anyway my point is the install basically runs in safe mode and the video card has no problem. But then on the restart it tries to run in normal mode and perhaps the video card is non-compatible. I may be way off base here but it is a good starting point.

[NooNoo]

Originally posted by bostonflunkie
I don't know what is going on with this machine. I worked on this machine over the weekend. I could not install NT4.0 or even 2k pro. It get stuck at windows needs to restart to finish installing, from here it restart and menu pops up which OS, Win98 or setup of win2k when I select 2k, it starts up found RAM and processor and than just stay there; blue screen. The way I am installing is; I format the dirve, use a win98 start up disk and then use floppy for NT and/or win2k.
What is the best way to install 2k?
Tahnks.

The best way to install 2K is to boot from CD.

As to the reboot problem - is there a promise controller in there or is the hdd primary master ide?

[Chëëzmønkëy]

ill wager 100 qatloos (sp) that you have a bad sector or 3 on your hd...

have you scandisk'ed it?

[Icharus]

I would argue with NooNoo about the BEST way to install 2000. For your typical home user, the best way would be to run from the CD. For a TECH however, the best way is to run the install from a working W2K/WXP machine to a new hard drive using an unattended install. Once the thing is set up, the installs are fast and consistent no matter how many times you need to install, and you get a better NTFS partition than upgrading from FAT32.

But..., if you've tried different HW (video, ram, other) and it still does not boot, the problem is probably with the CPU or mobo or P/S. Maybe even the keyboard or the mouse. You can try a BIOS update on the mobo, but if it's TRUE the user had NT4 on it before, that doesn't seem likely.

When you've tried everything that makes sense and it still dosen't work, you gotta try the things that might not make sense, or try something a little more drastic.

Anyway, good luck...