wolluf, thanx for fast reply
What I did was this: I did set the boot sequence to "CD first", and inserted WIN98SE CD. The system booted from the CD and, as it should, wanted to install WIN98, as described above.
As I do not have a functioning OS by then, I cannot tell you which drives the installation program recognizes. Only that it seems to see some C: with another OS on it it wants to delete. No other drives are offered for installation.
My WIN2K C: drive definitely is NTFS; I have a seperate Data partition D: (FAT32).
If it helps and I get your E-Mail-Adress, I can mail you a screenshot from PartitionMagic showing my configuration. My E-Mail-Adress is motorang@utanet.at
If I get you right, your assumption is this:
The installation program recognizes my J: partition (FAT32) as C:, assigning different drive names. Hey, now that seems pretty obvious
But:
There should be absolutely no system files there. I created this J: partition with PartitionMagic, and there is no option that lets me copy system files there ... But maybe BootMagic did something like that?
As far as I remember, BootMagic replaced the original MasterBootRecord by its own one, and the FAT32 partition showed there as bootable, only there was no OS on it by then. Unfortunately BootMagic did not work after reboot, it claimed that it could not find its IMG file. So now while booting I get a message telling me this, and to hit any key to boot from the active partition (which I changed to the NTFS/W2K partition again). Then WIN2K starts as usual.
Meanwhile I reformatted this J: partition from FAT32 to NTFS and sent it to the very end of my disk space. BootMagic was installed to this partition, because you canbnot install it to NTFS. So it is gone, but its MBR is still alive, and I still get that message.
I will try to again run the WIN98 setup CD, it now should not find ANY drive at all:
C: is NTFS
D: is FAT32 and primary, but not active and only contains a logical DATA partition. It was not found before, either.
J: is NTFS
If this is the case, I am confident to try it again.
1.) create FAT32 partition
2.) install BootMagic to this FAT32 partition (it cannot be installed to NTFS). But then I will remove the FAT32 partition from the Boot-list, as it contains no OS by then. I found this in the user´s manual, aftrewards ... The MasterBootRecord should then be rewritten correctly.
3.) set NTFS to hidden and FAT32 to active. Reboot.
4.) install to C: which is J: in WIN2K
As soon as I get home to my private computer, I will try this.
I´ll keep you posted.