Dual Boot NT4.0 & XP?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

I have an old, but still valuable, piece of software that gives me an access
fault when I try to run it under XP Professional. I know for a fact that it
runs okay under NT 4.0. I'm wondering whether there's any practical way to
install 4.0 so that I have the option at bootup as to which OS to start.

BTW -- I've actually tried to go backwards on this machine, but experienced
difficulty. I did try wiping the master boot record before reinstalling,
but when I get to the point where NT asks where to install, if I point it to
an existing partition, it will not recognize the large (NTFS) partition,
forcing me to wipe out the disk upon which I'm trying to install.

I suppose I could start from scratch, install 4.0 on its own 4GB partition,
then install XP onto another partition (would that work?) , but I'd really
prefer to avoid rebuilding this machine just now.

Thanks

Joe

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (More info?)

Joe Befumo wrote:
> I have an old, but still valuable, piece of software that gives me an access
> fault when I try to run it under XP Professional. I know for a fact that it
> runs okay under NT 4.0. I'm wondering whether there's any practical way to
> install 4.0 so that I have the option at bootup as to which OS to start.
>
> BTW -- I've actually tried to go backwards on this machine, but experienced
> difficulty. I did try wiping the master boot record before reinstalling,
> but when I get to the point where NT asks where to install, if I point it to
> an existing partition, it will not recognize the large (NTFS) partition,

XP and W2K use a NEW! IMPROVED! version of NTFS
NT4 does not know how to deal with that version of NTFS until
you install SP4 (or a later SP). Hence you can't install NT4
onto an NTFS partition previously used by XP or W2K.

As well, NT was developed back in the days when 100 MB hard
drives were considered big. It was not properly designed
for the relatively huge hard drives in today's machines,
and hence there are issues on partition size and placement
when installing NT that were fixed for W2K and XP. Hence,
even if NT knew how to deal with XP's version of NTFS,
your existing partition might be too large or too far from
the beginning of the drive.

> forcing me to wipe out the disk upon which I'm trying to install.
>
> I suppose I could start from scratch, install 4.0 on its own 4GB partition,
> then install XP onto another partition (would that work?)

Separate boot partitions for each OS is always the safest way,
and is usually also the easiest. It definitely will work -
I've had no problems getting any mixture of Linux, W2K, NT4,
Win9x, XP, and OS/2 to co-exist.

> but I'd really
> prefer to avoid rebuilding this machine just now.
>
> Thanks
>
> Joe
>
>