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NT 4.0 Will not install

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15 replies

by sidvail

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NT 4.0 will not install on my hard drive. Not sure what I'm missing. Win98 and Win2000 advanced server will install no problem. NT 4.0 will go through the process of creating the boot disk and writing the install files to the hard drive. Once I reboot with Disk 1 in the A drive I get to disk 3 and am told that no valid hard drive is present to install to.
I have installed it on my other machines, but not on the one I need it on. I have tried different hard drive geometry and partition sizes. Nothing works.
What am I missing? Help.
Sid

15 replies

by leon_guerrero

Is the harddrive on a secondary controller ,compressed, or possibly an unsupported SCSI drive?

If the harddrive is on the secondary controller you need to specify that drive by entering winnt /t:driverletter to start setup. The /t switch along with the drive letter, specifies the target drive for temporary files, and setup will know where to look for the temporary files when it needs them. Or you can move the harddrive to the first controller.

Make sure the drive is uncompressed.

If you have a SCSI drive make sure its supported.

by mckaytech

Something in your hardware is not supported under NT4 and my guess would be that it is either your IDE driver or the motherboard chipset - I've had problems with both of those components.

I would check for a BIOS upgrade for the motherboard or for upgraded drivers for the PCI bridge.

paul

by jagadishar_259

Well, what the other ppl said is true and with that, u can should also check this one.

Have u partitioned ur HDD with Fat32, If yes U have to reformat it into Fat16 as NT 4.0 does not support Fat32 like Win98 or Windows 2000 Server.

Hope it helped u

by dbowlin

If you are installing onto an large IDE drive, a common event these days, you may be running into a driver problem. The drivers supplied on the install disks do not always support, or recognize these larger disks. Microsoft knowledge base article Q179667 outlines some of the effects of this problem. It also provides a download of an updated driver to recognize the larger disks, and instructions for installing it during the install.

Good luck.

by mikejbyrne

I would my left leg that it is something to do with the drivers under the HAL in NT4.0 and your present drive or motherboard. Coz ytou noted that win 98 and WIN 2000 install ok ?, i amd pretty sure (read it somewhere) you get a thing called WDM - Windows Driver module - this means that win 98 and 2000 use the same universal driver ? funny enough if i am right not many people know this ?. Your BIOS does not support it or the hard drive is invalid.

by dlfman

Try partitioning the drive with a 250 mb FAT partition. Don't partition the rest of the drive. Let NT partition and format the rest of the drive. 250mb will give you enough space to install. Also, when you install don't use the 3 flops. Use thefollowing command: winnt /x /b /s:sourcepath for a DOS prompt. Make sure you have loaded the DOS CD driver.

by dwooming

I think it has to do with the file system. NT4.0 supports only NTFS and FAT16. Try using fdisk from a 98 boot disk to create a fat16 partition no larger that 2024MB. Make sure large disk support is not enabled when entering fdisk. After you create the partition, reboot and format the drive. Try the install again with the NT boot disks. If you get the same message again, then you will want to look into maybe drivers for SCSI controllers if you have a SCSI drive, upgrading the bios, drive compatibility, etc.

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