Installation problems

R

Ray K

I'm trying to do a clean install on a newly formatted hard drive that
will go into my g/f's computer by putting it in my computer and
installing W2K Professional. (I temporarily removed my second CD burner
and installed her drive in its slot. It showed up as drive H: (my two
other drives have several partitions).) After that's done the plan was
to remove the drive from my computer and install it in her computer.

1. Is there anything inherently wrong with this plan? In other words,
does a drive have to be in its final computer while installing W2K (or
any other OS)?

After removing her drive from my computer, I booted my computer. Just
after the POST, I am forced to make a choice of W2K operating systems to
start, even though at this point there is only one W2K installation (on c:).

2. How do I prevent this interruption to the boot process?

When first booting her computer, I got a message that NTLDR was missing.
I returned her drive to my computer (which also uses W2K professional)
and copied onto it from my c: drive the following files: boot.ini, ntldr
and NTDETECT.COM. Returning this drive to her computer and booting, I
get to the black screen that says Starting Windows, but can't get past
it to the Windows splash screen.

3. When I installed W2K on her drive while it was in my computer, why
didn't W2K create boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com?
4. How do I get her computer to complete the booting?

For what it's worth, my c:\ folder has the following files that do not
appear in her c:\ folder: IO.SYS, 0 bytes; MSDOS.sys, 0 bytes;
AUTOEXEC.BAT, 0 bytes; CONFIG.SYS, 0 bytes; and devicetable.log,
5KB.Both c: drives have pagefile.sys files, both 737,380 KB.

And yes, I made sure the master/slave jumpers were in their correct
positions (slave in my computer, master in hers).

Thanks for your help.

Ray
 
P

Pegasus \(MVP\)

Sorry, you stepped into a few traps - see below.

Ray K said:
I'm trying to do a clean install on a newly formatted hard drive that will
go into my g/f's computer by putting it in my computer and installing W2K
Professional. (I temporarily removed my second CD burner and installed her
drive in its slot. It showed up as drive H: (my two other drives have
several partitions).) After that's done the plan was to remove the drive
from my computer and install it in her computer.

1. Is there anything inherently wrong with this plan? In other words, does
a drive have to be in its final computer while installing W2K (or any
other OS)?
*** You can add/remove as many CD burners as you like - no problem.
*** However, you cannot normally port a hard disk from one PC
*** to another. In most cases it won't work because the hardware
*** is different.
After removing her drive from my computer, I booted my computer. Just
after the POST, I am forced to make a choice of W2K operating systems to
start, even though at this point there is only one W2K installation (on
c:).

2. How do I prevent this interruption to the boot process?
*** This is a minor problem that can be resolved by editing the
*** hidden file c:\boot.ini.
When first booting her computer, I got a message that NTLDR was missing. I
returned her drive to my computer (which also uses W2K professional) and
copied onto it from my c: drive the following files: boot.ini, ntldr and
NTDETECT.COM. Returning this drive to her computer and booting, I get to
the black screen that says Starting Windows, but can't get past it to the
Windows splash screen.

3. When I installed W2K on her drive while it was in my computer, why
didn't W2K create boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com?
*** You're probably booting off the wrong partition. However, solving
*** this particular problem will unearth the much bigger problem of the
*** different hardware.
4. How do I get her computer to complete the booting?
*** You must perform the installation of Windows 2000 on her
*** own machine.
For what it's worth, my c:\ folder has the following files that do not
appear in her c:\ folder: IO.SYS, 0 bytes; MSDOS.sys, 0 bytes;
AUTOEXEC.BAT, 0 bytes; CONFIG.SYS, 0 bytes; and devicetable.log, 5KB.Both
c: drives have pagefile.sys files, both 737,380 KB.
*** You can delete the .log file. The other ones take no space -
*** leave them.
 

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