I believe that this is failing for two primary reasons:

1.  The boot partition must be a primary partition -- it cannot be a
volume located within an extended partition.  [The NT install isn't
detecting and reporting this, *probably* because the folks who wrote
it assumed everyone would know this!]

2.  Most BIOSes require that all bootable partitions begin before
cylinder 1024.  [So deleting that last partition, shrinking the
extended partition, and reating a new NT boot partition in the
remainder of the drive is also unlikely to work.]

David G



On 8 Jul 00, at 21:22, Roger Griffiths wrote:

> 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've tried using both the setup disks (set of three) and booting
> from CD ROM to do the installation. Both work fine in terms of
> carrying out the initial setup. That is disk two and three are
> called for in the appropriate time and order. Then the CDROM is
> located and drivers installed for it. Then the option to choose a
> partititon for NT is offered. I select the appropriate partiton
> and allow NT to format it being the last logical drive of 823 Mb.
> I've tried both FAT16 and NTFS, both have worked in terms of
> successfully formatting the drive. Then I am advised that setup
> will suspend the other O/S before continuing. Finally I am asked
> to remove diskette and CD and press enter to restart. Having done
> so the PC starts to boot, gets to "Verifying DMI pool" and then
> stops with just a flashing cursor.
>
> I've attempted this on three machines and had the same result. The
> other disk drives involved were 20 Gb and a 6.4 Gb, in the case of
> the 20 Gb and 8.4 Gb HDD's I get warned that the disk exceeds 1024
> cylinders prior to selecting the partition for installation or
> formatting that partition. The biggest partiton I have tried to
> install on is 1.5 Gb.
>
> If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong I would really
> appreciate it. I know it can be done as I did this last year, but
> have no idea as to what I am doing differently. When changing the
> active partition back to Win98 and checking the drives in My
> Computer the partiton exists as does the WINNT folder that setup
> creates, but no Boot.ini file is locatable - is this cretaed
> before NT setup is complete if so why is it missing?

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