NT and Windows Installation

Sorry if this appears twice. I did not see it so I posted it a second time.

I am trying to install NT on my home system for the MCSE courses that I am taking and I seem to be having quite a few problems with installing, booting, and running these different OS’s. A reply to one of my posts on “Multiple OS’s” from member name ‘hireintelligence” stated that he was running with NT on one partition and Windows on the other. I have followed closely the steps in the MS Knowledgebase article Q243896, “How to Dual boot…” at http://support.microsoft.com/support...-US&SD=gn&FR=0
But I receive the error message when choosing NT 4 from the dual boot menu: “\system\ntoskrnl.exe cannot be found. Please reinstall from disks or CD.”

I have also tried, via FDISK, to create three 2GB partitions on my 6.4GB hard drive so I could install Workstation, Server, and lastly Windows 98. My problem here is that I do not see an option when booting to choose an OS from multiple OS’s. My system simply boots straight to Windows 98.

My questions are:
1.) Do Workstation and server have to reside on separate partitions?
2.) Is there REALLY a need for Workstation if Server is installed?
3.) With either 2 or 3 partitions, how do I invoke the dual boot option?
4.) Has anyone had experience, good or bad with the MS Knowledgebase Article above?
5.) I am considering installing a second, larger, hard drive since my 6.4GB is no longer enough. Would putting these OS’s on different hard drives make matters less complicated ?

I would really appreciate some advice and/or “step-by-step” instructions {or links to something similar} from someone who is implementing this on their system. I thought this would be the easiest module in the course but it is turning out to be a bear! I thank you for you time and effort and I do apologize for posting multiple questions on this topic. I would really like to get my system back up and running rather than sitting “blank and in the dark” like I am on this installation.

Thanks Again,

Jeff

First off, workstation and server can survive on the same partition but one must be in a seperate direcory. It is windows 9x that if installed will overwrite the OS installation on C:

Secondly, there is notreally a need for workstation unless it is on a seperate machine so that you can have a true network to test user accounts and access with. Also, you could install workstation, then install the administrative tools from the server cd rom.

It has been a couple years since I have had the dual boot setup, but I believe I had 95 installed first, on the primary partition. Then, installed NT onto D:\ in the remaining extended partition (with one logical dos drive).

Finally, putting the OS's on different drives could make things a little less complicated. Most newer bios's will give you the option to boot from either c: or d: . Swtiching between OS's could be as easy as changing your boot order in the BIOS.

Make sure your hardware is supported under NT.

I am going to be setting up a few dual boot machines at my house on my small LAN here in a couple of days. After I do I will post again with a fresh recolection of just what's involved with setting this up, so please check back if your interested and I may have a few tips for ya.

[This message has been edited by disturbance (edited July 06, 2000).]

After reading the MS dribble I still feel you should create a primary partition with Fdisk, make it active and install win98 on it. Then, install NT after on an extended partition to the first logical dos drive D: . Use fat then convert to NTFS later. Don't forget to mark the primary partition active. In the article they mention multiple primary partitions. Remember that the one containing the boot files must be acitve. I believe this can cause the ntoskrnl to not be found as well as other files, esp. bootsect.dos (the file that enables the dual boot).

PS> Since you mention you are starting to learn NT , I should mention that the only compatible file system NT can see is FAT16. This does not include FAT32 (win98).

I've been installing multiple OS's since about 1994, when I first installed OS/2 on a machine with DOS/Windows in a separate partition. There are two utilities that you can use to install multiple OS's that will definitely keep the headaches to a minimum. I personally prefer Boot Manager, which IBM originally shipped with OS/2, but PowerQuest has licensed it and includes a copy of it with Partition Magic. Boot Manager allows you to create multiple PRIMARY partitions (up to three on a drive, since Boot Manager itself occupies 2MB of disk space as the active partition) and install Operating Systems to those three partitions. This is how I have mine set up at home, with OS/2 Warp 4, PC DOS7/ Win3.11, and Windows NT Workstation all installed. I use a second drive for my application/data partitions. Each OS recognizes FAT partitions, so I have a FAT partition primarily for use with DOS, but also for sharing files between OS/2 and NT. OS/2 then has a data/app partition that is formatted HPFS, and NT has a data/app partition that is formatted NTFS.

When you boot with Boot Manager active, it gives you a menu of operating systems to boot with. By default it chooses the last OS you booted to after a 30 second timeout. But with Partition Magic you can specify other options for booting, such as a default OS, and different names for the OS partitions.

The other utility is called System Commander. I've used it, and it works well. You can install multiple OS's and OS versions to a single partition, as long as you keep the OS system files in different directories. For example, you could install MS-DOS 6.22 to a directory called DOS622, and PC DOS 7 to a directory called DOS7, and then Windows NT to a directory called WINNT4...you get the point. As long as you don't use the same directory name twice, you can install up to (get this) 256 Operating Systems on the same box! When I was in a funky mood, I once used System Commander to install 10 different operating systems in the same partition - different versions of DOS, different versions of OS/2, Win95 and NT workstation all on the same system. By using FAT, OS's that read FAT drives can be installed to the same partition.

I don't know if I could stand to have a box without multiple OS's. Believe me, once you start down that road it's very addictive (-:

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

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Thanks to both PCShark and Disturbance for sharing your experience with me. I've learned more from individuals in this group than I could had ever learned in class.My goal is to obtain the MCSE but without the experience it's seems as though it's really not much more than a calling card and a piece of paper. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Jeff Farrar

I'm also going for my MCSE what I did on my machine which is 10gb was

1)DOS 2gb this is so that you can at least get into your machine and tinker with some setting seven if you can't get into NT (this is bigger than what it needs to be). Formated Fat

2)Win98 4gb I use this as my default os I have it set on a 10 sec incase I want to go to NT server.Formated Fat 32

3)NT 4.0 Server 2gb this is what I view when I'm studying. I did have NT Workstation 4.0 untill I passed my Workstation exam then I remove it and installed Server. Formated NTFS

4) 2gb on what I call the test partion. I have all of my testing materials (Exam Cram, New Riders, ect) Installed on this one and have it formated as FAT so that I can view it from NT or Win98 no mater which OS I'm in at the time.

I hope this helps good luck on your quest. Feel free to email me with any questions.



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Thank You,
Kirk Allen

I'm agree with PCshark.
I'm just want to add, what very fist file system, that located in active partition,
must be compatible with others (FAT16, for example) You want to install .
Farrar,if You want to make multy-boot system without headaches, You should install Win95/98 first, simply because Windoza will kill boot sector (and must die for it).WinNT
allows You to keep this boot sector in special file named bootsect.dos,so multi-boot is ease-to-made with WinNT without any special utility.You also can add WinNt4 workstation,simply installing it in another
partition (Fat16 or NTFS).
Boot Manager,PQ Pmagic,and System Commander Delux 4 are also excellent things, but very difficult to recover data from system under
System Commander, if samething with SC goes wrong.
For education purpose I'm recommend You to install all operational system You want to learn in separated partitions and good luck!
Of course,You should backup all important data before.

Disturbance, what are you on!!!!! I have both NT4 Workstation & Server on the same partition on my second system running no problems at all. They do not overwrite each other if you change the installation directory for one of them during setup.
I am about to install win2k on the same partition (2gb NTFS), to which i install all application software to other partitions.

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Thanks for all the help. Yes, I did accomplish what I was trying to do. I answered "No" to enabling large disk support and the file type/system WAS listed as unknown. Then, I used the format command to format the 3 partitions with all 3 being formatted as FAT. I then used Partition Magic to convert logical drives D and E to FAT32 leaving the primary C as FAT16 and installed both Server and Windows98 on the C drive. I installed a utility called FAT32 Viewer on C drive which allows me to read files on a FAT32 partition from Server. {The version that allows you to both read AND write is $ 39.00 at www.sysinternals.com.} I just kept creating, formatting, and deleting partitions until I hit on the right combination. I wanted to use the FDISK and FORMAT command exclusively rather than using Partition Magic but my brain was turning to mush and I needed to get both OS's loaded before MCSE classes resumed this weekend. So, I finally resorted to using the utility to convert the FAT drives to FAT32.
Thanks to all for the help! It was greatly appreciated.

Jeff Farrar