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NT Installation Failure

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by trautmann

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Here is a problem I've encountered several times and cant' figure out. I am doing a clean install of NT 4.0 WS. The first part of installation(text-based) seems to fine. I create and format my partitions and create the default \WINNT directory. I amtold the first part is completed and the system will reboot to continue installation. After the reboot, I receive the error message "Missing Operating System" or a very similar message. I've tried swapping drives, playing with master/slave settings,changing IDE cables, changing BIOS settings. Nothing seems to help! Any advice on reason(s) this happens. It's not the first time I've encountered this and never got past it.

11 replies

by wetguy98

I would start over from scratch and use a DOS utility called FDISK to create a Primary DOS partition. Then I would make the partition active with the same utility. Boot from your CD and begin the installation process again. Instead of installing to \WINNT directory, install to something like \WINNTWKS or some thing to that effect. Are you formatting with NTFS or FAT16? Hopefully this might help.

by sdaniels

1. CREATE NT INSTALLATION DISKS BY USING YOUR NT CDROM ON 98 MACHINE
D:\WINNT /OX
USE THESE DISKS FOR INSTALLATION AFTER YOU YOU HAVE FDISKED AND CREATED AND ACTIVATED PARTITION. FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS PER DISK
INSURE YOU ARE USING CORRECT DRIVERS FOR YOUR MACHINE .NT4 DRIVERS ARE NOT ALWAYS COMPATIBLE WTIH MANUFACTURER.

by trautmann

Though no one solved this problem for me, you offered good advice. The problem turns out that the NT Setup Disk #1 was infected with the NYB boot sector virus. This, in turn, infected each hard disk I attempted to install on. I had to use fdisk /mbrto clear the virus from the boot partition and recreate the install floppies.

by vue

sound like you have a problem of IDE hard drive bigger than 8 GB. Loading NT with IDE hard drive bigger than 8GB, you need to download the new Atapi.sys from Microsoft site. ftp:\\ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-unsup-ed/fixes/nt40/atapi/ATAPI.EXE and copy the file to a floppy disk. If your IDE is not bigger than 8 GB, this is not the answer.
Good luck.

by ewing bettles

There are definitely problems with atapi.sys version compatibility as suggested in answer 4. Als, I've noticed this behavior installing NT directly from the CD and not using the Startup floppies. What happened in my cases was the disk configuration in Boot.ini was written using "scsi(0)..." instead of "multi(0)..." - when I edited the boot.ini file to the multi(0) format, the install proceded just fine.

Good luck, -Ewing

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