Installing NT, no clue what I'm doing, begging for help...

Hello and thanks in advance for any advice...

I feel like a dumba55, I assume this is a simple issue...

I am installing NT4 workstation, for the second time in my career here, and for the first time on a 40gb drive...
Anywho, I am using the 3 floppies, and when we get to the hard drive detection, I can only go up to 8033MB? Is the NT setup limited to *gb partitions? Gee, I would like to use all 40GB of the drive, since the sales team already told him it would be no prob.

Suggestions please. I am assuming there is a better way, I just don't deal with NT enough to know WTF I am doing...

I think maybe it's not NT that is the problem, the mobo is the problem. Some older BIOS don't recognize large HDD's like that. You could try looking for a flash update for that mobo from the mfg website. There is however one other solution which I forgot,... so keep looking in this topic because I'm sure someone else will post it.

Did you FDisk and Format the drive correctly?

a google searched turned this up:
[begin cut and paste]
For hard disks over 8GB in size, you'll need the IDE
driver atapi.sys from NT Service Pack 4 or later.
Download it here:
<a href="ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-unsup-ed/fixes/nt40/atapi/ATAPI.EXE" target="_blank">ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-unsup-ed/fixes/nt40/atapi/ATAPI.EXE</a>

Extract the files from this download to a floppy disk,
and begin setup with the three setup floppies. During
setup disk #2, you'll be given the opportunity to
specify a mass-storage controller. Press "S" for this
option, and then highlight the last item in the list
that appears: "Other Mass-Storage Controllers."
Continue with setup, and provide the floppy with the
later atapi.sys driver when prompted. NT should then
recognise the entire hard disk size.
You can create and format up to a 4GB system partition
during the setup process, in either FAT or NTFS file
system. Then use Disk Administrator to partition and
format the rest of the drive, after NT is up and
running.
[end cut and paste]

I don't use NT much at all either, but it sounds pretty valid. can't hurt to check it out.

Screw NT 4.0, try Win2k. YOu will find u will keep alot more hair on yer head that way. I have done way to many NT installs. After my first Win2k install NT 4.0 can kiss my white tech butt.

From my little understanding of it, NTFS partitions in NT 4 are only capable of either 4 or 8 gb - I can't remember which. I'm not sure if when you get it installed, if SP6 would allow you to create a larger partition on the rest of the drive. Hope that helps some.

And yea, I would suggest going on up to 2000 if that's possible.

This is just another reason sales staff need to get trained properly, and not just convince themselves they know what to sell a client.

NT 4 has troubles with large partitions, always has. I would suggest installing it on the 8 gig partition, and then partitioning the rest of the drive in an appropriate manner.

The sales person should call the client, and inform them of this, and be honest about his/her mistake, instead of blaming a tech for the shortfalls of NT 4.

Good luck

Is your PC that doesn't recognize the 40GB drive, or is it that you can't make the installation partion 40GB?

If I remember correctly, NT4 has a 2GB limit on the partition it is installed to if you are creating the partition during the installation process. Why this is so I no longer remember. NT is a fairly old OS, one that would run adequately well on 486s. Hard drives were smaller then, and Microsoft's recommendation was that the OS be kept on a separate partition from data and applications, so the 2GB limitation wasn't such a big deal at the time. 2GB seemed ample before the advent of monstrously large Service Packs.

You can try formating the drive beforehand in another NT computer or you could use a utility like Partition Magic to resize the partion after installation.

However, if you resize the partition, 2GB to 40GB let's say, you stand a very real danger of encountering the "Can't find NTLDR" error on boot. This may not show up immediately, but when it does show up it is quite catastrophic.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I would suggest installing it on the 8 gig partition, and then partitioning the rest of the drive in an appropriate manner.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's the ticket. If I remember right (I've been on 2K since the beta), you are limited to 8GB for the system drive. Other drives can have larger partitions, I think. This is a good configuration anyway, since you can keep your system on a clean partition. It's easier to lock down that way, I think.

I'll rehash things here.

First, Get the ATAPI driver diskette from the link above. you NEED it.

When installing, use the boot disks, make sure you hit F6 to install third party controllers, point it to the disk.

When creating your partition, you need to restrict your boot partition to 4 gig. NT4.0 can't creat an NTFS partition when installing, so it creats a Fat16 or fat16B (4.2 gig limit) then converts it to NTFS on the first reboot. If you want the NTFS partition to take the entire drive, pop the drive into another NT4.0 machine (2k will NOT do see below for why) and creat your partition in the GUI. You can also use an application like partition magice to extend the partition.

Once installed, Upgrade to service pack 6a, and install IE.5.5 (download them and put it on CD before you start)

There are a few major upgrades in the service packs that you need to conisder, I'll post the major ones here..

3 AGP support
4 large hard disk support
5 NTFS 5 support (this is what 2k/xp use), Directx3 (i think)

So install the service packs BEFORE you install drivers.

NT also has another quirk.. when installing drivers, if the OS asks for the original cd for anything, you MUST REINSTALL the service pack BEFORE you reboot.

Edit: Also look <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tweak/nt/udma.html" target="_blank">here</a> for instruction on how to enable DMA on NT4.0, if you don't enable it, your running in PIO mode.. about 6megs/sec and 90% SCPU usage has aposed to the 20 megs/sec with 5% CPU usage that DMA allows.

First off, I wanna say thanks to you all for the info, without you people and this community my job would not be nearly as rewarding.

Oh and I guess I blamed the sales guys to quick, apparently this client needs NT cuz his proprietary s/w will not work on MODERN OSes (how many times does this happen? but that is another rant)....

Yes it is a new board (amptron 810lm, for those of you unlucky souls who deal with amptron enough to know this board) I should have mentioned that.

I will try an install with the new info, and update you. maybe i will resort to the partition magic trick if worse comes to worse.....

Thanks! I will post again later.

NT has an 8GB boot partition limit. When installing you usually can get only 4GB to install the boot partition because reasons posted earlier. Other than the boot partition, as long as you have the most current service pack you should have no problem partitioning bigger space.

right now i am up with a 4GB system partition and a 32GB d:\ drive...also got sp5 and sp6 installed... couldn't have done it w/o yous!

Looks like the built-on NIC and built-on video aren't going to work tho, amptron's drivers ARE NOT WORKING!!! AAAUGH!!!! KILL ME NOW!!!!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Stanley_Kubrick:
<strong>right now i am up with a 4GB system partition and a 32GB d:\ drive...also got sp5 and sp6 installed... couldn't have done it w/o yous!

Looks like the built-on NIC and built-on video aren't going to work tho, amptron's drivers ARE NOT WORKING!!! AAAUGH!!!! KILL ME NOW!!!!</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Dont kill you... in the infamous words of Junkyard Willie (Touch Tone Terrorist) "Urinize on NT 4.0 "

Everything enabled in BIOS?