offtopic about Win2K

[J Lindroos]

I installed Win 2k one one of my harddisks. I have 4 partition of witch 2 is unknown for windows. I wanted to place my ntfs (win2K) file system on hda4 (C and chosed it in the installation. When installation was finished and computer was restarted I got 'Operativ system missing'. I tried to make hda1 bootable cause hda4 was before. hda4 is a FAT32 wich I use from another windows system, on my second harddisk. Now I got error 'NTLDR is missing, Press any key to restart'

What's wrong??? I know the partition table is a little bit mixed up, but I don't want to make big changes so my information is lost.

Thanks! Sorry for the offtopic

[J Lindroos]

HAHA
I didn't expect that smiley to show up
It should be something like (C: )

[AIS_DK]

Have you checked, that your bios is starts the boot procedure from the right disk?

Win2k doesn't need to be installed on the partition you boot from (which btw. must be your C: drive), but it does require, that it can store about 15 (not sure about the right number) files on the partition. Win9x or dos requires that you install them on the C: partition, no way around that part unfortunally. If your C: drive i FAT32/16, then use FDISK to check, that it is also set as the active partition, if not set it as active.

[J Lindroos]

hda4 is C: and it was set as active but I got the message 'Operative system missing'. I'm not sure if you can use DOS fdisk to check on a ntfs, but I used Linux (CD) fdisk to make hda1 active since hda4 didn't work. I have no problems with space if that is the question, my smallest system partition is 5 Giga

Still no change

[AIS_DK]

This might have missed in your first post, but running Linux and Win2k, on the same compute, can be troublesome. The boot-manager, that ships with win2k, is rather picky, when is comes to, who it will allow to run the boot-up sequence. From what I've learned, it trusts only itself, and doesn't like the boot-manager that ships with Linus (I'm not sure about the newer version, but the old had this problem). So the normal procudere when installing win2k is:

Install OS's like win9x on the C: partion, if you wan't that kind of OS installed.
Thereafter install Win2k, on another partion then C: (never install two operating systems on the same partition)
And last install your linux distribution, and when asked, leave the boot-manager as it is, do not overwrite the boot-manager with the one shipped with linux.

[J Lindroos]

Well, I'm not using my Linux system now and neither LILO, the bootloader, but I want my Linux system to be intact til I'm using it again. So, if everything worked as it should, Win2k should install it's bootloader on that partitions, that i chosed to install on, bootsector. And since that is the active partition, and I have fdisk /mbr with my Win95 system, the mbr should load the ntfs partitions bootloader and start Win2K. But that is apperantly not the case and I don't understand what is wrong.

The message I got is 'NTLDR is missing', so if anybody knows what that's meaning please reply. My Linux system have nothing to do with it, that is just the cause of the partitiontable mess.

Thanks

[Ping]

I thought the bus only acepted 3 partitions?

[J Lindroos]

no, four actually. So on my two disks I can have 8, and if I just want to use them as diskspace, I can make logical partitions, and have up to (or more than) 16 partitions.

[Ping]

Yeh, I know you can have more than 3 with logical partitions, I was talking about boot partitions per disk. Does fdisk support 4? I tried last week and could only get three. Did sore searching last week, and was advised u could only have 3. What u using to put 4 on?

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Only windows NT/XP/2000 can use the File Structure NTFS, so when your C: drive is where you have the NTFS, and windows, 98, or anything else is there it'll not boot because it can't. It'd be like putting ext3 on a windows system.(A linux File Structure)

You should have your C: partition FAT, not FAT32, just FAT.

This enables DOS to work on it.

As such... you should have your operating systems on seperate partitions.

Example:
My C: is empty except for a few games and such.
My D: Drive had my program files.
My E: Drive is Win2k Adv. Server.
My F: Drive is multimedia storage, movies mostly.
My G: Drive is my MP3's.
My H: Drive is pretty much blank.

I used to have windows 98(dual boot), but since I never used it after installing windows 2000, I formated it's drive and that would be my blank.

[Ping]

I put 3 boot partitions on one drive for 95/98fe/98se but couldn't get a 4th for ME to use as a clean machine to test apps. All FAT.

Not got enough cash for big boy operating systems

Thats why I asked what prog he was using to put 4 ops on one drive?

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

When you fdisk, you can create logical partitions.

So cut up a 60 GB drive into 10 parts of 6 GB each.

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

How big is your HD ping?

Win2k, you can create logical partitions in the OS.

No restart, no need for dos.

No need to re-install crap.

[Ping]

disk on the clean machine is 2.3G win95 and 98FE partitions are bout 300mb with win 98SE at about 700mb....not using the rest of the drive yet as its only there to test apps.

When my wife lets me out with a cheque book I'll buy big boy operating systems! Would love to play!

[J Lindroos]

Look, this should not be any question of what operative system or file system you have. As far as I am concerned the mbr should check the partition table and execute the code on the bootsector of that partition witch is active. Then if I install Win2K on one partition Win2K should install it's bootloader on the partition's bootsector.

Maybe I'm wrong, since I'm getting error.

I think that Linux's fdisk is much better than windows/dos fdisk. It knows most filesystem and fdisk in windows doesn't even show partitions witch file system it doesn't know.

[AIS_DK]

Then if I install Win2K on one partition Win2K should install it's bootloader on the partition's bootsector

Actually Win2k will alwyas install it's boot-manager on drive C:, and hence C: must be the active partion, and it must be on the master harddrive. It you put it on your slave harddrive, then some BIOS' won't be able to find and boot from it.

[J Lindroos]

Well, no probelm. I have fixed it. There is something wrong with my partition table, and I don't wanna change cause of the risk to lose information. Win2K:s bootloader halts because of this error, But Win9x bootloader does not. So I put in a win95 startupdisk and typed sys c:
So now the problem is solved.

Thank you for helping me, and again sorry for this offtopic thread.

[JoshT]

I have NTLDR on my G: drive, not C: drive (both partitions on same physical disk) at work, running only W2K Pro on the computer, everything formatted NTFS. The legacy *.sys / autoexec.bat are on the C:, but boot.ini, ntdetect.com and ntldr are on the G:. Weird.

[J Lindroos]

So what partition is set as active then?

[JoshT]

How do you determine that?

Disk Management has C: as boot and G: as system. Can't change either drive letter.

[J Lindroos]

Run->fdisk
Press 4 (Partition information)
If you have more than one harddisk you may have to chose witch harddisk. The partition with an A, is the active partition

[JoshT]

I don't have fdisk on my computer...