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Dual boot win2k and nt4

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by bajasurf

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Okay, I've seen numerous questions (and answers) for dual booting scenarios where NT or 98/95 was already on a system. I have a situation with a machine that had NT 4.0 (sp4) installed, was upgraded to Win 2000 workstation and now has to also have NT 4.0 (again with SP4) reinstalled (dual boot capable) to run some specific software. The machine does have to hard drives in it so I can install the NT on its own hard drive but getting that done and haveing the win 2000 dual boot manager recognize that NT is there is my problem. Help! Has anyone had to go backwards like this? Any suggestions or recommendations please. Thanks.

10 replies

by dkpalmer

Create an ERD for the Win2000 install. Then install NT4.0 and use the ERD to "fix" the boot configuration so that Win2K will boot correctly and edit the boot.ini as required to insure dual-boot access.
Or, install NT4.0 and then re-install Win2K -it will set up the dual boot and should retain all your program/configuration settings. ( I've done reinstalls on non-dual boots and it appears to work like Win95/98 in terms of retaining system configuration information so I don't know why it wouldn't work for dual boot also ).

by gregory w. smith

You may be in trouble. Win2000 updates all NTFS partitions to NTFS5. NT4 setup is SP1 at best, NT requires SP4 to recognize an NTFS5 drive.

If you *still* have the NT4 install on the machine, that should work because it has SP4, but a new installwill probably fail.

If your system partition is FAT and you have a new drive or space on a FAT partition for the NT install, you will be fine, though.

by bajasurf

I guess somemore information concerning this setup would help. First, there are two drives in the system. Drive 0 is partitioned into 2 logical drives, C: and D:. The C: drive has the Win2k OS installed on it and both C: and D: are formatted with NTFS5. Additionally, this drive is an IDE drive connected to the motherboard IDE port 1. Drive 1 is a Zip 250 connected to IDE port 1 and IDE port 2 has a CD drive and a CDR/W so the on board IDE connectors are full. I installed a Promise Tech. Ultra66 controller for Drive 2 which is partitioned into logical drives G: and H: both are formatted with FAT16. My problem is that NT 4 does not want to see these partitions during setup. Short of a complete reinstall, I am thinking of using Partition Magic 6.0 to move the C: partition (Win2k OS) to G: and then installing NT 4 to C:. Does that seem like a reasonable alternative? This attempt to go backwards in installing a dual boot is more complex then I expected so any further advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

by msgtray

I have a system almost identical to yours. In addition to the promise board controlling an IDE drive, I also have a symbios scsi controller with a scsi drive. I am running Win2k Pro, NT4 WS & Server, and Win98 (just to see if it could be done).
My recommendation is to use PM to free space and create a 200-400MB primary FAT partition. Make it active and install NT4.0 onto the promise controlled drive. (NT install will ask you if you want to install drivers from 3rd party, you do have the promise driver disk?) This type of install will separate the system partition (small FAT drive C) from the boot partition. Once NT4.0 is up and running, reinstall Win2k.
On the Win2k install; the first time it asks to repair an installation, select install. When you select the existing location of your Win2k installation for the install, it will ask if you want to repair the install and you can select "R" for repair.

by bajasurf

Your answer was close to helping me out but unfortunatly I ended up brute forcing this install. What ended up happening was that I had to install the NT 4 partition on the C:\ drive as the NT setup absolutly refused to install on the second hard drive (the drive on the Promise Controller). No matter what I did, NT would not go there so I gave up fighting with it and installed NT in its own partition on drive C:\ and moving all of my Windows 2000 data, aps and OS to the new drive. The lesson here ended up being that if you have NT 4 on a system and want to upgrade to W2K, ask yourself if there is even a remote possibility of needing or wanting to use NT 4 in the future. If there is, leave it alone and install W2K in its own partition. Lots less headaches in the long run. Thanks for your help.

by mdessaint

if you need drivers to use the ultra66 controller, win nt 4.0 will not see the other drives, i have a soyo board with the ultra 66 chip built in, i had to make a driver disk and tell nt 4.0 setup i had additional devices, it then askes for the disk.After that it see`s the other drives.

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