win 2k wont install

[wildbilly2k]

well i have been trying to install win2k on my computer but it gets errors when formatting to an ntfs particion. anyone know what i can do to get win2k running on my computer.

[CrystalMethod]

Need a little more info. What/ how exactly are you going about your install?

[dugans]

how big is the partition you are trying to install to?

[oc jason]

try this user a 98 boot disk and at the a: type fdisk, then youll get a whole list of options. ou need to totally deleted all partitions (unless u have data that u wanna keep), and start the install from scratch. Win2k is quirky about partition size. you can make 1 bit NTFS partitoin but it works great if you make a partition just for the OS, the size should be 4064mb, and use the rest for you files - that way if you ever wanna install something else of just to do a format you can toast the OS without touching you data files! I had MAny problems installing it - but finally got it - a u using a reatil boot copy of the disk or another form or it - if you dont have a reatil copy you must have all 4 boot disks to load the setup files from

[wildbilly2k]

i tried instally the maximum amount of partition sive it would let me. and i deleted all partions that i had which was one then just booted from cd and it just got an error when It put the ntfs partition on the harddrive and hten it owuldnt fomat it after that. so i had to delete the partition

[ken257]

Are you sure your hd doesn't have a bad spot or 2? Try running a scandisk utility just to make sure.

You can always try to install to a fat32 partition and later on convert it to ntfs.

[dugans]

a funny thing with both NT 4.0 and win2k- they don't like (and I don't think MS supports!) installing to a partition bigger than 4gig even though they support drives and partitions FAR bigger!

I do the 4 gig os part, and a couple other parts for data, alternate oses, etc.

There is a workaround for this- but you need to have a running NT/Win2K pc to do it:

install the new drive as slave and boot up. Create a partition using the entire drive and format it, then reboot (just to make sure.) Shut the pc down, reinstall the drive in the new pc and you can now install NT/Win2k on a 1 part big huge hard drive.

NOTE: NTFS is better than fat32- and I did lose an install once doing the conversion.

I have done this a few times with no problems, but..............!

[ken257]

Originally posted by rogerdugans
a funny thing with both NT 4.0 and win2k- they don't like (and I don't think MS supports!) installing to a partition bigger than 4gig even though they support drives and partitions FAR bigger!


I have never had this happen with W2K. Right now my W2k setup is with 2 30gig drives in a raid 0 configuration. The single(logically single) 60gig drive that appears is divided into two 30gig partitions formated with NTFS. W2K is installed on the firt 30gig partition with no probs at all.

[wildbilly2k]

well i should just get a 4gb hard drive and put windows on that and install all my other stuff to my other hard drive.