If you are building the computer, it almost certainly will
boot from CD.  If you are using one drive with NT server, I
recommend multiple partitions, so that shares can be separate
from the system files.  I also recommend you create a system
partition on the boot drive from a dos diskette as a
fat16 partition.  NT has some peculiar ideas about large disks.
My installation kept insisting on a system partition
(where the WINNT directory will be) of 1 gig on my smaller drive,
while that drive had no partition information whatsoever.  After
I partitioned it in dos, it allowed me to specify the entire
disk as the single system partition.
Once NT is installed, it gives more precise information and
options in disk administrator than the install routine.
For instance, I didn't touch my big disk until after the install
was successful, then I went back from the nt desktop and used
disk administrator to partition, assign drive letters, and
format as NTFS.
If you have odd hardware like a raid disk array or scsi controller
or whatever, press F6 when you see "NT is inspecting your hardware
configuration...." and you can specify the hardware and the drivers
to use without having to boot from a diskette that has the drivers on
them.
Tom Turak


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 1999 9:29 AM

        I'm getting ready to build my first computer with Windows NT on
it. While I've installed 95 and 98 dozens of times, I've never
installed NT.
        What do I need to know/do differently from my usual routine?
Does NT have it's own fdisk and format files? How do I get an NT
boot disk, the OS came with two CDs but no floppies.

         The PCBUILD web site always needs good submissions.  If
          you would like to contribute to the website, send any
               hardware tech tips or hardware reviews to:
                           [log in to unmask]