NT Boot Problems

[jonathankeeping]

Hi there,
Being a bit of a newbie to Windows NT, I decided to install it to a spare HD. That way it couldn't bugger up any of my other partitions!!! The installation process when fine, and NT was loading with no problems http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. I thought I’d push my good fortune even further and copy this NTFS partition to my master drive. I used Partition Magic 5 to do this, and again there were NP’s http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. I then tryed to boot from the partition I just copied, and BLANK SCREEN!!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif For some reason the bootstrap routine wasn’t able to hand control to NT!!!

Is there any way to do a "SYS A: C:" NT equivalent to get NT up and running again? Or do I basically have to spent another day installing NT to my master HD!!!

-Jonny-

P.S. What’s the latest service pack NT is up to?

[fishboy]

Try using the three NT setup disks that you had to create (unless you did a winnt\b setup) You will come to a screen that asks you to restore data from NT rescue disk. ( I only have to assume you made this). Otherwise, there should be an option to load last known good configuration. I am not sure if you get this with the three bootdisk way but you will at the initial boot screen. A better way to convert to ntfs is to go to the command prompt and use the convert command.

[jonathankeeping]

Hi fishboy,
Well I tryed everything I can and still no luck!!! I think the problem comes down to NT not supporting my HD properly. It doesn't seem to regonise to partitions, and when I create a NTFS partition during the setup it keeps erroring. I think I'll just wait for Win2K and hope that installs OK. Thanks for your help anyway...

-Jonny-

[fishboy]

Did NT load OK using FAT? If so, you will have to fdisk the drive, delete non dos partition, create a fat (not fat32)partition,
boot up off a bootdisk with cd support and then install NT (Change to i386 directory off of cd and type winnt) You should then be able to convert to NTFS when prompted. I use a dual boot winnt\win98 using fat 16 because NTFS only works under NT.

[PerryBoy]

Do you even get to the point where you see the NTLoader? Also when you copied your NTFS partition to your master hd, is it more than 2gigs from the beginning of the drive? If the partition starts more than 2 gigs from the beginning of the drive, then NTFS wont work, you'll have to go FAT. Even if you went FAT, I think you'll need to apply some kind of update to the boot sector where NT resides.

I almost have the same setup, here:

drive 1

primary 1 FAT32 Windows 98 1 gig
primary 2 NTFS Windows NT 1 gig
primary 3 Linux native /boot 16mb
extended ( 5 partitions on FAT )

drive 2
primary 1 Linux native root partition 2 gigs
primary 2 Linux swap 200 megs
primary 3 Linux native 500 megs
extended ( 3 partitions on Linux native )

Hope that helps

[jonathankeeping]

Well I must have tryed almost everything now. I've tryed running the NT setup boot from the bootable CD, and the 3 boot disks, and tryed installing NT to both FAT-16 and NTFS!!! Everytime I get to the partition setup screen. From there I can never get any further. I've tryed deleting the previous NT partition, creating a new one, but even then it still won't install!!!

I think my problem lies with existing partition structure. The NT setup doesn't seem to show all of my partions properly. Also, if I run partition magic just after trying to install NT, it says that the partition structure is invalid. NT is the only program that would have changed it. If I were to install NT to a clean HD I don't think I would have the same problems.

Heres my current partition structure...

Maxtor 17GB

Primary 1, 3GB NTFS Win NT (if it ever bloody works!!!)
Primary 2, 3GB FAT-32 Win 98 (using it now)
Primary 3, 3GB Linux Ext-2 & Swap Redhat 6.0
Extended 1, 4.5GB FAT-32 Data files
Extended 2, 2.2GB FAT-32 Hidden (Win 98 Backup)

IBM 15GB

Primary 1, 6GB FAT-32 (Programs/Games)
Extended 1, 3GB FAT-32 Hidden (Data Backup)
Extended 2, 2GB FAT-16 Hidden (More backup area!!!)
Extended 3, 750MB FAT-16 Hidden (CD copy area 1)
Extended 4, 750MB FAT-16 Hidden (CD copy area 2)
Extended 5, 1.8GB FAT-16 Hidden (OS Setup files)

Anyway, thanks for all your help http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif I think it might be easyer to wait till Micr$oft Windoze 2000 (Feb 17th). Then that will support my FAT-32 partitions and hopefully will install OK.

-Jonny-

[PerryBoy]

You might wanna make sure that there is no unused space between partitions. That might help. I'm not sure.

[grant13]

problem is you used partion majic to copy
ntfs