Dual boot, NT4.0 over win2k?

[ryoko 0]

I installed win2000 on a system with nt4 to create a dual boot, and that worked fine. Now I need to install NT4 on a win2k pc to make a dual boot system. Since nt4 is older, will it still work or do I have to manually modify the win2000 boot.ini file?

 

Win2000 is on the master HD, and NT4 will be installed onto a slave drive.

 

Thanks in advance,

-RY

[c0rv1d43 0]

This could really be a can of worms. The following is just my extrapolation from previous experiences that do NOT include doing the type of installation you propose. What file system is the Windows 2000 disk / partition using? If FAT32, then NT4 isn't going to see the drive's partition properly, but it would still need to write to the MBR of the first drive (wouldn't it?). If the Win2K disk is formatted NTFS, then you'll have to be using an NT4 SP4 disc or later in order for NT4 to be able to see and read / write on the Win2K drive. Even if you manage to get the install done, you'll then have to do a FIXBOOT-style repair from the Win2K setup CD because more than the boot.ini needs to be changed. The MBR will have been overwritten with the NT4 version which won't, AFAIK, work for Win2K. One good thing would be that you could use Win2K's disk manager to prep the second drive for the NT4 install. That first partition on the NT4 drive could then be the theoretical maximum of 7.8 gigs for an NT4 boot partition, and the MFT for the partition would be in an optimal position because the drive would be pre-formatted NTFS instead of converted the way the NT4 self-formatting / conversion feature works during NT setup.

 

I'm a simple guy. I'd do it the simple way. I'd start over and install NT4 first, then install Win2K on the second drive. The last I looked, Microsoft advised against dual booting NT4 and Win2K right inside the same MSKB article that told you how to accomplish it. They always recommend installing old first, then newer. And I don't like to look for trouble.

 

Good luck! I hope you'll post what you do and how it turns out.

 

- Collin

[ryoko 0]

Thank you for the ideas,

 

I completely forgot about the sp4 disk, my disk is sp1. I think I will try out partition magic and their multi boot program. I'm just looking to get a quick install of nt4 up for a few programs that still are not win2k compliant.

 

If I find something works out well, I'll let you all know.

 

Thanks again,

RY

[shinji3c 0]

you could install nt after installing windows 2000. just that you would need to reinstall other files that are needed to load windows 2000.