drive letter 1

[jacksplat]

i just installed windows 2k pro to dual boot with windows 98 that i had already. under 98, i had c, d, and e drives. now when i go back into 98, it shows that 2k made a new drive d, and reassigned my old D to e and my old E to f. it shows there is a drive H which i thought i installed 2k too. at the same time, when i'm in 2k, it shows the normal c,d,and e drives, and that win 2k is only installed on the H drive. any idea how to fixe this? or am i going to ahve to reinstall everything that i had on my d and e drives in 98?

 

[m1ckey]

Try running the disk administrator and try re-assigning the drive letters

 

[pbxman]

Most common cause of this is the need for 2K to be installed before the 1024 cylinder limit. The fact that it made room for itself is a good thing for cross-partition compatibility.

Did you do this manually, or use Partition Magic? Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

when i installed, i had a unformatted 12 gig hd as a secondary drive that i used to have linux on. when i installed 2k, i wanted to install it only on the 12. when i ran the install, i got to pick where i installed it to, and then the install formatted automatically. i guess tahts where the problem lies. Could I reformat, and then format the 12 to 1 drive myself, then install 2k on that 1 drive? or would it still try to make a new D drive?

 

[pbxman]

No - It should only be installed on the primary partition.
Did you lose data, or is everything there, but not labeled the way you want it to be? Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

all the data is there, its just that my drive letters changed, so everything in 98 is messed up.

 

[pbxman]

You could either start over, or use partition magic's drive mapper utility to automatically re-assign the programs to new drive letters.

Either way - Partition magic wouldn't have let you make this error. I don't know of a way to regain control of your drive letter assignments if windows keeps changing them. You could try reassigning them in disk administrator, or use FDISK to activate a different partition as default.

What does your boot.ini file look like (or the boot-menu itself)? Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

i think i might just start over, i didn't install anything into 2k. so using partition magic, how would i set it up so i have my original c,d,e drives unchanged and just make 1 new drive to put 2k on?

 

[pbxman]

Its easy - you'd just choose "create new partition", and the wizard will ask you if you're going to install an operating system...you check yes, and then tell it what OS you're going to install. Then it'll tell you everything you need to know.

Note: Partition Magic should still put 2K on D: since it must be on a primary partition before 1024 cylinders. BUT - you'll have the drive mapper utility with it to re-arrange your current mis-pointers for your drive assignments.

That program is worth it's weight in gold whenever partition-work is concerned. It also comes with rescue diskettes to recover from almost anything you can possibly do to your partition setup.

Feel free to email me at jt@nserv.net if you run into problems with it. I'm quite fond of that program..you need version 6.1 to work great on Windows2000.

Have fun! Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

so i should delete the old partitions the i had win 2k on and then create new 1's and partition magic will walk me thru it?

 

[jacksplat]

i have partition magic 6.0 on my computer btw.

 

[pbxman]

Yeah. If it's not critical data or anything, i'd start fresh and delete them. If you want to, you can email me a screenshot of partition magic's screen showing your config, and I can tell you if it can fix it, or if you must start over.

Its up to you. Either way, partition magic will walk you through re-creating partitions. Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

i couldn't find ur email so i just uploaded the ss to my sisters webpage for u or anyone else to download at their leisure. the link is

http://www.tayloredflowers.com/partitions.jpg

now i have never used partition magic, and i see that there is a merge partitions button...so could i just merge the 2 extended partitions on my primary hd with my c partition? then i could just have my entire primary drive in 1 drive, the C drive, and have my slave drive with NT on it as the D drive? also u might notice that i have 7.8 mb of unallocated space at the end of my slave drive. could i just add that to the D drive? thanks for all the help

 

[pbxman]

Well - I saw the picture, and there's a few things you can do. The easiest being to convert your Windows 2000 drive to NTFS. You wont be able to see it from Win98. I don't know what's on your E & F logical drives..but if it's just data - Based on your setup, this is what I would do:

Boot into Win98, and copy everything on your E & F drives to the "H" drive (Win2K).
Delete the logical partitions (E & F).

- that will leave you with just Drive C:, and a ton of unallocated free space on your first drive.
Go back in Win 98, and do a "Create new partition"..basically install Win2K on your first drice along with Win98 so you end up with C: (Win98), and D: (Win2K) on your first hard drive.

Then, I'd keep your 2nd hard drive just for data, merge the partitions, and assign it a single drive letter. You'll end up with
{DISK1 - CWin98), DWin2K)}
{DISK2 - EData)}

With this setup, it will allow you to make any adjustments necessary in the future to make more space for whatever your needs may be.

Note: Some of these operations might take quite a while to convert, and i'd recommend installing the Boot Admin tool that comes with Partition Magic, and let it take care of all the O/S boot-up assignments.

Also - CREATE RESCUE DISKS!!!! I cannot stress that enough..you can use them on ANY pc you have problems with from there on. Those disks are life-savers when partition trouble comes into play.

Good luck.

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

i think i'm just gonna have to format and redo everything. It will probably speed up my win 98 too, getting rid of all the junk. thanks for all the help tho. I'll keep u posted on what i end up doing.

 

[pbxman]

Sounds good - I always do that when I get a chance. I'd much rather spend an hour re-installing the OS than spend HOURS re-configuring stuff. Nice, clean, and well thought-out layout is always better than noodling around in a mess.


Have fun chief! Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful. Thanks!

Pbxman
Systems Administrator

 

[jacksplat]

yeah so i tried to use partition magic, and it got like 76% done and then created a 302 error...i don't remember what it was...so i ended up making the partitions myself in fdisk. then i tried to format the partitions after i made them by typing "format C:" etc...but it kept saying bad commadn for file name. so i figured running the 98 setup would have a part where it would format the hd, and it did, but it kept asking me to put my cd into drive F, but drive F was a hd. so i decided to try my luck with 2k, and 2k installed and i formatted the other drives from within windows by right clicking on the drive and selecting format. so i tried to install 98 again, and overwrote 2k cause 98 has to be first. i got more than halfway thru teh installation to where it searched for ym hardware, then i had to reboot, and when i rebooted, i never made it into windows, when it was still loading i got a "windows caused a protection fault, you must reboot" so i rebooted, same thing. I tried my dads 98 se to see if that made a difference but nope, same thing. 2k works fine tho. I'd like to be on 98 more cause all my software is for 98, only some of it works on 2k. I installed 98 last summer on my then new western digital without the additional 12 gig using my 98 disk without a hitch. help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jacksplat]

on the 98 board i saw a post saying all i have to do is remove the cd before it reboots and i won't have a problem. I'll try that and then u bet ur buttons i'll be back here if it doesn't