windows

Catch_22

every now and then for I find a reason to actually have to install windows anyway current problem is that my primary hard disk is 100% non fat/ntfs partitions and windows claims it doewsnt want to install unless it can access a primary partition on the primary harddisk,

any one know off hand of a way around this ??

sutty

Windows needs to be installed on a fat partition, or nt on ntfs, there is no way around it.

---

Ciaran Sutcliffe
aka: sutty
[HIV]sutty
For a good time goto:
http://www.hotinternetvirgins.com

Catch_22

i phrased the question badly
i have now probs giving windows a cuple of gig of fat on my second hard drive, what i am having trouble over is that windows insists on having files such as io.sys, msdos.sys command.com etc on a primary partition of the primary harddisk.
what i want is to somhow get windows to install to the second hard disk without requiring any files on the first hard disk,

altho i could always just disable the first hd in the bios --- DOH !

Canaboid

Win9x(all DOS based OSes) have to install on the primary partition and it must be set as active. Have a look with fdisk.

_CreeD_

Just have a small (say ~100mb) boot partition of good old Fat16. Then you can install what you like, where you like.

The alternative is using DiskManager and FDisk to constantly swap active partitions.

Catch_22

a fat partition appearing on my first hd is not goin to happen basically, but ive successfully got windows to boot no probs before when its no where near the active partition, so the only thing to to spoof the installer which is why i reckon just disabling the first hd for the duration of the install should do the trick.

but at this rate im never going to know cause im NEVER gonna get outa work

c22

_CreeD_

Er....If you haven't got the boot files on an active FAT partition there's no way to get it to boot up to Win9x from a HDD.
Plain.
Simple.

If you do have a method of doing it please post it here and I'll apologise for my ignorance.

Catch_22

one method point lilo at the windows partition with command.com etc in the root & go.

there are a number of other open source boot managers that will do exactly the same trick.
Ivehad this type of scenario setup several times in the past where windows is no way resident on the first disk, just as long as you have somthing on the MBR to point the machine in the right direction if you wanna boot it.

c22

_CreeD_

So then you're relying on a boot manager that also has to 'understand' NTFS.
Fair enough

Catch_22

not really ,
take lilo for examle, all it does is pass an instruction to execute the first sector of whatever partition it wishes.
the structure/filesystem of the partition is largely irrelevent to the boot manager itself.
anyways when did i mention ntfs,
i just want win98 on fat 32.

[given the hangover this morning any offence caused by any of my postings is probably unintentional ]

c22

sam

when installing win98, disable the first hard disk or somerthing.. install as if your second hard disk is the first one (taking out the first hard disk is the simplest way). once win98 is installed, install lilo(have to install at least a bare install of linux for this) on the first hard disk, and get lilo to boot win98.
you dont need any windows files on the first hard disk this way, ive used this method for ages and it doesnt **** up anything.

WhiteWashMan

jesus, do what the man said and change the active drive....

Catch_22

yeh thats pretty much the conclusion i had come to, still havent got around to doin it tho

>"have to install at least a bare install of linux for this) on the first hard disk"

think i have about 10 - 11 gig of linux and solaris .. so should be alright

_CreeD_

Still seems an awful lot of work when you could just a have a plain old (small) Fat16 active partition and boot all your O/S's from it...

Catch_22

yes but im inclined to blame the structure of windows for that, plus its only for the install that i gotta hide a disk in the bios.

the problem is that windows doesnt use the bootstrap on the hard disk effectively zeroing it and allowing execution to fall thru to th efirst sector of the active partition, which for all intents and purposes is its mbr.

really windows shouldnt be dependant on any single partition location and should simply store its boot partition id in the bootstrap

but then such is life with microsoft

Gerry

I had loads of fun before, when I moved win2k away from the front of the drive, so that lilo would be able to "see" freebsd, and i was stuck with freebsd for a while then. Mad laugh.