Problem Installing 2K to additional partition.

I am asking this question for someone else, who has tried repeatedly to install 2K onto his system.

He has tried various methods of installing it, but it gets to a certain point, then tells him there is something wrong with the partition that he's trying to put it on, and the installation will not continue, or that there is possibly not enough memory, & installation will not continue. He has run Spinrite on that partition, & it finds nothing wrong, and he has 256MB of RAM.

One method was just doing a setup.exe from the disk, which resulted in it being installed within the 98SE OS, but as a separate OS unto itself inside it's own folder on Cdrive, which he could choose to use instead of 98. That is not what he wanted. He wanted it in it's own partition on the hard drive.

Another method he tried is making the bios bootable from the CD, but it wouldn't boot from the CD at all.

Another method was re-setting the bios for A drive & making the four boot floppy's required & using them. It got up to the point of beginning to install, then it said there was something wrong on the partition, & the installation would not continue.

He also tried upgrading the 98SE with the 2K. Same thing, except in that case it also told him he may not have enough memory.

He tried both NTFS, & FAT32. No go.

Can anyone give any suggestions as to why, no matter what he tries, he can't get it installed. This is a stumper. He's never had a problem getting FE, & SE installed to separate partitions. Why 2K?

 

He says he tried that already, and it told him that there was something on that partition, which there wasn't, of course. It didn't say what was on it. Just that it couldn't install to it, so he had to use the 2K setup to delete the partition as per 2K instructions, & re-formated it as per 2K instructions, and it still refused to install. There was something it needed that it didn't have, or couldn't find. He can't remember exactly what it was.

So it would seem that it just plain don't want to cooperate, and he is so exasperated after two days of trying, that he just plain quit.
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The only time it actually installed was when it installed into the same primary with 98, in it's own folder on drive C with an option to select either one. That seems really weird.

Boot Magic would boot to the primary where they were both living, then 2K would give the option to choose 98, or 2K.

I don't understand why it can't be installed onto a partition of it's own. It just refuses, no matter what. Even when he does exactly what it tells him to do.

 

Be very interesting to find out exactly what "There was something it needed that it didn't have, or couldn't find. " was.

It certainly should work as you describe it and especially as TonyT recommended.

Somewhat worrysome that with his BIOS set to boot first from CD it won't boot from the 2K CD though. If that's the case and it will boot from another CD, then he may have a bad 2K CD.

A random thought here - has he ever had any flavor of Linux installed on that PC?

A second random thought - when he creates a new partition, is it usable? Stores files and everything?

A third random thought - years ago I had trouble trying to install NT4 from CD and the problem was the CD drive was too slow and the installs would just fail. Usually after telling me something was missing and couldn't be found. But we are talking 2X or 4X - really slow stuff.

 

He made the boot floppy's in case it wouldn't boot from the CD. It wouldn't even install that way. The only other OS he has is 98, & 98 does not boot from the CD anyway.

He made the partition with P Magic. Disabled boot Magic. Put the CD in the drive, re-booted, & it goes to a blank screen with nothing on it. Not even a prompt of any kind. Just a vertical cursor line blinking.

Never anything but 98, or 98SE.

Yes. The partition is able to function properly otherwise.

The CD ROM Drive is a 52X. The Burner is a 40X read speed. Neither of those should be posing a problem. He says both are working normally.

I got the information about what it couldn't find. He'd written it down, but had temporarily misplaced it. I guess frustration takes it's toll on any of us.

Here it is:

Value in .sif file is corrupt or missing. Value 0 on the line in section [source disk files] with key "SP3.cab "
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Does that help any?

 

More Info just came in.

When he tried to upgrade from SE to 2K, he did get it to make a report on what components may not be compatible with 2K, but it still refused to install, or upgrade 98.

All of this may be mute anyway, since it said there were several things that may not be compatible. The Audio 16 PCI sound card, Sygate Firewall, HP Printer Tool Box, & a few other things he didn't know what they were, but thinks they were related to the sound card in some way.

 

Problem installing 2K to additional partition

Some More thoughts on this subject.

You mention firstly INSTALLING only worked when installing onto the W98 and later you say he was trying to "UPGRADE ". Is he using a NEW WIN2K disk OEM version (COPY???) or is he using an "UPGRADE" disk??? If the latter then he will only be able to UPGRADE the win 98 installation not create a new win2k installation.

Have you ran a virus check on the PC before installing?

Is the virus scanner running when you try to install?

Is BIOS VIRUS CHECK turned OFF? - it should be for a new install.

Hope this helps

Chas

 

It is a full install disk. When the full install failed several times in several ways, he then tried the upgrading, out of frustration. He tried that twice & it failed both times.


An Anti-Virus is installed, & virus checks are a regular maintenance procedure for him. The Anti-Virus program should not have interfered when he tried several times installing via the floppy's he made. Even made two sets of floppy's & tried with both sets. It would have been in DOS type mode with those, and the anti-Virus should not have had any bearing on what happened.

Don't know. I will check with him on that, but I figure it is, because it is turned off in mine as a default setting, but I don't know concerning his.

I just thought of something! Would his Motherboard be interfering? It's pretty old & the BIOS won't recognize a fixed drive any larger than 32GB. He had to buy another 30 because of that so he could have a larger slave drive than the one he had after replacing the master with a 30.

He's been having another problem lately that might be causing this too. In the past couple of weeks, when he boots up to 98, a lot of the time 98 will tell him his registry is corrupt, and says it will have to replace it. As you know the only choice that it gives you is OK, so it does it, but does it with a very early version that don't have links in it to some of his programs so he has to go in & replcae it again to get those links back. Even when he's replaced the whole OS with a good image, it would start doing that again in a couple of days. I haven't been able to come up with an answer to that problem either, except that maybe one or both of his RAM chips are beginning to fail.

I have thought about borrowing the 2K disk & trying to install it on mine just to see what happens, but I haven't. I'm sort of afraid to with as much trouble as he's had with it. Scared I'll wipe out some of my stuff. However, I do have my old WD 10GB hard drive just sitting around now, and just to see if the disk is at fault or not, maybe I will hook it back up as a master temporarily & borrow the disk & try installing it, just to see what gives where the disk is concerned. If it will install, then something is not right on his comp somewhere. Finding what it is might be a problem though.

Thanks guys for all the input. Hopefully we can figure this out soon. He's not one to give up easy. I figure he will go back to trying again once his nerves have settled a bit.

 

Actually he has 98SE on both of the drives. What he wants to do is get 2K installed as a second OS on the same drive with one of the 98's, but in a separate partition. I don't know if this can be done or not. Is there any reason why it couldn't?

Partition Magic is supposed to work with 2K. Why wouldn't it?

I will tell him what you've said.

Thanks again Tony. Appreciate your help.

 

Where is this smartdrv.exe located? On the 98 disk or the 2K disk?

He says he did that with no luck. It couldn't find it. Then he typed in the full pathway to it & zilch. Still didn't work.

All I can say to that is that is the way he likes it. A spare 98, so to speak.

He has Partition Magic 8.0.

He says he tried again today to just update 98. Didn't even try a new install, & for awhile it looked like it was going to do it, but alas it got to a certain point & started the stuff again about not being able to find stuff. This time I think it was C drive it couldn't find. Seems to be something different each time he tries.

I'm beginning to think the disk is bad. He says he is through. That he's had it! I can't say that I blame him. It shouldn't be this big of a hassle. He's tried about 7 or 8 times, & in various methods, & ways, & nothing he does works. According to him he's tried everything that has been suggested, except making the 98 disk with the smartdrv.exe on it. I didn't get that information to him before he tried again today to upgrade 98 to the 2K.

He is just so disgusted right now that he's decided it ain't worth the hassle, but I really appreciate you all trying to help. Maybe he can get the disk replaced & try again before long.

Thanks a lot guys. You've been great.

 

Thank you. I just didn't know which one had the smartdrv.

He actually has about six almost identical OS's. Some are identical to each other. Three on each drive, I think. I asked him once why he wanted so many identical OS's when he only uses the computer for two different things. Internet, & Autocad. He said he just liked having several.

I have several OS's, but I use each one for a different purpose. One reason we all have so much trouble with these things is programs that don't get along with each other. So I have OS's for different purposes. One for Internet usage, one for Audio editing, & one for Graphics. Can't afford three computers.

In the past, I have experienced programs not only changing, or replacing .dll's in the system folder, but replacing them in the folders of other programs too. Now that is not kosher. Any .dll with the same name got replaced, or updated, no matter where it was living. Then I'd have programs suddenly start messing up when I'd had no problem with them before. Once I learned how to set up multi-boot systems, I pretty much fixed that problem. There are good reasons for having several OS's of the same one, but if all I did was Internet, I'd have a main one, & one back-up, but I do lots more different stuff than that. Separating the programs out into different OS's was a real problem solver for me.

Since then, I've learned a few other tricks that can help in that area as well.

Right now, I think he has just decided to cool it for awhile, until he gets over this irritation.

I think I will do as I suggested once before, borrow the disk & try to install it on an old 10GB I've got after I wipe it clean. That will determine if the disk is actually bad or not. If the disk is good, then there is something else going bad wrong.

Thanks again Tony for your interest & help. I am sorry I wasn't able to post a resolution to this problem for everyone's benefit.