Post Install of Win 2000 Pro

[fxcolin]

HI,
I'm about to install win 2000 Pro on a PC already running Win 98. I'm pretty clear on the install, but unsure what to do afterwards.

Here's what I'm going to do:
Install Win 2000 on a new partition (D:/).
So essentially I will have:
C:/ Win 98 and all programs
D:/ Win 2000
I understand that it would be better to have the OS and programs on separate drives. So I'm wondering can I have Win 2000 point to C:/ drive(even though Win 98 is there) or should I create a third drive (E:/) and one by one install each of my programs and then eventually uninstall win 98 and delete C:/.
I'm pretty sure all my programs are Win 2000 compatible, mostly web development like Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop as well as some games.

Also, how do I tell Win 2000 to access the programs that are on another drive ?
Also, I'm hearing alot about the BIOS, where do i find that?

Thanks
Later, Skater

http://www.chefmedia.ca

http://www.fxstudios.ca

 

[karlehenry]

ok first of all, do you still want to use WIN 98 adn if not the C: drive is the root drive. You may not be able to dual bott with win 98 and 2000 with 98 mas the primary OS. as far as yoru programs, you will i believe need to reinstall them. Cause allt eh informations is stored in the registry. Email me if you have any more questions'

as for the bios. the bios is the first thing you see when the pc boots up, it checks mem, all your dives
adn stores all yoru information, time, date, memory, processor information. karlehenry@aol.com
P2C solutions provider
Computer Consultant/Desktop Specialist/Help Desk Administrator

 

[wolluf]

If you don't need win98, you are better off removing it and doing a clean install of win2000. If you set up a dual boot (win98/2000) machine - which is straightforward to do - you will encounter problems later when (if) you decide to remove win98 (ie, its not straightforward). There's no real reason to install programs on different drive/partition to operating system - they generally have components on the system drive anyway. It is a good idea to keep your data in a separate partition (eg, MP3s, pictuires documents etc). Makes backup easy and if something goes wrong with o/s partition, your data has a reasonable chance of being secure.
As shadow says - you'll need to reinstall (most - some will work just running from C your programs in win2000 anyway.

 

[fxcolin]

Thanks for the info.

Problem:
I went and creatd a new partition(850MG) with partition magic and proceeded to install win 2000

When it rebooted win 2000 became the default OS on C:/
When I click on c:/ I can only see 850MB !! What the hell happened to the other 5.5G !
So I installed partition magic and it shows the 5.5G as hidden and no drive letter assigned.

Is this an easy fix ? Do I just assign the 5.5G the letter C and then win 2000 will automatically become D or E ?
I'm paranoid I'm going to lose data.
Both are labelled primary, although only the win 2000 is set as active.




Later, Skater

http://www.chefmedia.ca

http://www.fxstudios.ca

 

[karlehenry]

did you partition the 5.5 GIG as a secondary with logical drives, and if so did youformat it? karlehenry@aol.com
P2C solutions provider
Computer Consultant/Desktop Specialist/Help Desk Administrator

 

[wolluf]

When you say you created new partition with PM - was 98 still installed on its own partition? (By the way, lots of people have had problems with win2000 installed on a partition created by partition magic - win2000 is best installed on partition created by its own partitioning tools during install. If you need to create space for new partition - use PM for that, but then use win2000's tools to actually create partition in new space).

If win2000 thinks its partition is C:, you won't be able to assign C: to any other (and changing system drive letter for win2000 is difficult & likely to cause lots of problems).

Like shadow, I'd like to know exactly what you did.

 

[fxcolin]

shadow, it's a 6.5 gig HD and I thought I would set aside 1 gig for the new partition, leaving 5.5 gig. I didn't format the 5.5 'cause i didn't want to lose data, but I did format the 1 gig before installing win 2000 on it.

wolluf, Yep I had big time troubles with the drive letters. Couldn't even boot up. Luckily Partition magic has a DOS fix to resore the letters in the registry. Took a few hours, but I did it. What I did was I tried to change the drive letter of win 2000 from C to E. (win98-5.5gig)was shown as hidden. And then I was going to make it active and give it C. Anyway when I changed the 2000 letters I was forced to reboot and wouldn't load because the registry was still reading C and not E.
Also, I originally did try to install Win 2000 thinking it would create its own partition. When it got to where to install, it only gave me the option of C:/ (win98 6.5gig).
Anyway I panicked and cancelled thinking it would overwrite all of C:/ -Maybe I was premature?? I started thinking that maybe the next step would have given me the option to create a partition. Can you confirm this??


Anyway back to square one, sort of. Right now I have 3 drives C:/(5gigs)Win98primary, D:/(500MB)logical, Win2000(1gig)primary hidden, NO letter assigned.

So I guess right now I just want to be able to dual boot. How can I do this? I thought boot magic came with partition magic, but I don't see it anywhere.

Also how do I uninstall win 98?
Should I make a partition to back up data and then just uninstall and then format the drive and then install win 2000?

any help is really appreciated !!

Thanks,
Colin

Later, Skater

http://www.chefmedia.ca

http://www.fxstudios.ca

 

[wolluf]

'Also, I originally did try to install Win 2000 thinking it would create its own partition. When it got to where to install, it only gave me the option of C:/ (win98 6.5gig).
Anyway I panicked and cancelled thinking it would overwrite all of C:/ -Maybe I was premature?? I started thinking that maybe the next step would have given me the option to create a partition. Can you confirm this??'

Was this before you used PM to create new partitions? win2k install displays what it sees in ternms of partitions alreadt there - so when you did this win2k could only see this one partition - so you would only have option of installing into it (ie, into win98) or deleting it and creating new partition(s). Win2k doesn't allow you to resize partitions - need something like PM for that.

Depending what you want, this is what I would do! (assuming you can still boot win98?)

If you want to remove win98 and just have win2k, I would use PM to remove 500MB D: drive and 1 GB hidden & create a new primary partition (FAT32). Then I'd backup everything I wanted from win98 partition to this new partition. Then I'd boot from win2k install CD. When it gets to point of choosing where to install it should show 2 partitions - 5GB win98 and 1.5GB backup. Delete the 5GB paritition and create a new one and install win2k there (FAT32 or NTFS). Once installed, you should be able to recover everything from backup partition.

If you want a dual boot still, boot into win98 and start win2k install. Choose clean install (not upgrade) and tick box to be able to select where to install it. When you get to to point of choosing where to install, it should show 2 or 3 partitions (5GB and 500MB and perhaps 1GB or 1GB unpartitioned space). remove the 500mb & 1 GB and create new single partition - install win2k there. You'll get a dual boot menu.

Note: 1.5GB is not much space for win2k - the operating system usually takes at least 700MB.

PS. If you can't boot into win98, you may need to restore the boot sector files. To do this, boot with win98 boot floppy. Save the file msdos.sys in root of C: somewhere else (its hidden, read only system file so need to run attrib -r -s -h on it first). Run Sys C: command then copy msdos.sys file back.

Hope this helps!