Installing NT 4.0

NT can't install beyond 1023 cylinders because it uses interrupt 13 BIOS calls to talk to the hard disk during setup and that translation scheme is limited to 1024. so i think your options are:
1) install NT to partition within 1024 cylinder limit or
2) use controller card with hardware translation that supports booting from beyond 1024 cylinders.
3) use driver that supports large disk translation and modify boot.ini scsi() to use that driver...
if this is an older computer, consider a new controller card or examine the system BIOS to make sure you can't turn on large disk support...

To translate answer # 1 a little simpler, NT won't install on a drive partiton larger than 4 Gig. Partition your drive using Fdisk to create the primary partition to 4 Gig in size <4096 Mb.

I thought the partition limit for NT is closer to 2 GB than 4. Which is also the reason I will be logging a question. I have several NT systems with a single physical drive partitioned into 4 logicals the first one being 2.1 GB, and the remaining 3 less than 2 GB each. I can't figure out how to make C logical overflow to D logical when c gets full. Look for my question. It might help your situation as well.

You can bypass the limitation with a custom made boot disk that has the disk driver (atapi.sys?) with the one from the SP6a... That driver will not use BIOS int 13h so it will work. Or you can copy the driver from SP6a to a floppy and when setup asks if you want to provide a manufacturer disk driver use that floppy.

The other way: make a 2GB partition, install NT then use a program like Partition magic to extend the partition...

If you boot from the CD or Installation Diskettes, then you have a few choices:

1. DOS (FAT16) Partitions
The Primary / Active Partition cannot be bigger then 2GB
2. NTFS (NTFS4) Partitions
The Primary / Active Partition cannot be bigger then 4GB
If your NT comes with SP4 (on the same CD) then there's a chance it will recognize the driver and format it to a larger capacity.
3. You need to format the driver for NTFS on a different machine that has NT4.0 with SP4 or later applied to partition. In this case you can use the entire capacity in one partition.

Hope this clears up all the confusions.

By the way, you cannot make drives overflow to one another. You could extend the partition if there are still vacant /available space on the hard disk.

Take it easy! :-)