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Subject:
From:
Mark Rode <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 9 Jul 2000 19:03:37 -0700
Content-Type:
text/plain
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text/plain (66 lines)
The only time I had problems getting NT4 to install somewhere other then
the primary active partition was when using a ABIT BE6 revision 2
motherboard with the separate ULTRA 66 HighPoint BIOS. The only way NT4
would install on this board using ULTRA 66 drives and on board controller
was on the primary active partition. Obviously if you install to the active
partition and you want a NT4 Win9x multi boot computer that primary active
partition will have to be  FAT16 so that both NT4 and Windows 9x can see it.

Windows NT4..or any version of Windows for that matter must have it's boot
files on the Primary active partition. Other then that you can install NT4
to any FAT or NTFS partition primary or logical partition. I have done this
many, many times for NT4, 98, 95 and 2000. The way I prefer to do it is to
create a small FAT16 primary partition for the boot files...the C drive. It
can be as small as a couple of hundred megs. Then  I create a extended
partition with the rest of the available drives and fill it with logical
drives. These logical drives can be FAT, NTFS or FAT32. Win9X will not see
the NTFS partitions and NT4 will not see the FAT32 drives unless you use
third party drivers. Win 2000 will see all partitions. On the C drive I
like to put the swap file at a fixed amount and then tell everybody to use
the same one. NT4 and Windows 2000 both use pagefile.sys as a swap file.
With Windows 9X you need only put this in your system.ini file under 386Enh
section to have Windows use pagefile.sys.

PagingDrive=C:
Pagingfile=C:\pagefile.sys
MinPagingFileSize=200000
MaxPagingFileSize=200000

Now you have a bunch of Windows operating systems installed on different
logical drives all sharing C as a boot drive and all sharing the same swap
file. If you want to use a third party boot manager like System Commander
this C drive is a good place to put it.The C drive can also be used for DOS
diagnostic utilities, partition software, and backup imaging software. All
your operating systems will be neatly installed on their own partitions and
if you ever decide to add Linux to the mix you still have two primary
partitions left over to play with.

To install Linux on a mulit-boot setup like this I would use a third party
like System Commander to handle the multi-boot...do NOT allow Linux to
write to the MBR..tell it to stay on it's own partitions and then create
two primary partitions. A primary Linux Native to install Linux to and a
primary Linux swap ....no bigger then 128 megs...for the swap file.

Mark Rode
The NoSpin Group



>   I may be wrong, but if my memory serves me, NT needs the first partition.
>In the past, when I was messing with NT, I had FAT16 on the first 500mb of
>my drive and the remainder FAT32.
>
>Igary r. tennesen
>Hi,
>
>I have for some time been trying to install Windows NT 4.0 on the same disk
>that hosts Windows 98 SE. I have my Seagate 8.4 Gb HDD partitioned as
>Primary partition set to approx 5.42 Gb, and an extended partition with two
>logical drives, the first being 814 Mb and the second being 823 Mb.
>
>I

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