NT 4 Install - Will Not Partition C: Drive FAT or NTFS. 1

[arfjay]

[1] My IBM 330 NT 4 SP6 server broke yesterday. The first symptom was no access to Network services by anyone [ no email, files, data printing ]. After determining it was the NIC I added a Lynksys NIC; booted; configured the NIC and rebooted - and since then it will not boot to NT Backoffice from any drive and will not recognize the ERD. When using the NT Setup disks it says it cannot see the CD drive and we can't get past that. It appears the Controller has broken so we are loading everything onto a PC to get things going in the interim.

[2] The PC is a 3 year old Seanix with 20 GB harddrive, 256 Ram, CD ROM, CD Burner. I have installed the DAT tape drive from the IBM and a 'loaner' SCSI card [as the Tape drive was installed direct to motherboard in IBM]and have the LAN data line [from the switch] attached.

[3] My problem on the install has been after booting from the 3 NT Setup floppies it calls for the 1st CD however does not appear to be reading from it for the next stage. I advise it to auto recognize the hardware and then get to the C: drive partition stage and i have not been able to get it to partition the drive - the following has happened:

** would not partition 2000 mg NTFS
** would not partition 2000 mg FAT

each of which took 5 hours to try. It says the drive is corrupted or has errors however I have been using this drive for a couple of years [not heavy use - no Music, no games , no viruses - only used about 3 Gigs of it] plus it has been consistently defragemented and scanned for errors and never found any.

How can I get this thing to partition and let me load NT??


I have read the FAQ and a lot of this Forum and have 3 books and none of them give me a clue for this. I would very much appreciate any help anyone can give me today. I will be watching online as the email does not work.

Thank you

 

[arfjay]

Since starting this thread I notice i did not advise that the PC I am trying to load NT onto was running Win 98 as an OS. Also, a few other things:

** Upon bootup with the floppies it does not appear to recognize the SCSI card I have installed to the DAT Tape Drive - perhaps this comes later?

** I tried formatting the hard drive with a DOS disk [6.22] after which I thought perhaps I could format FAT with the NT floppy but this did not work. When i got to the 3rd NT floppy and it asked for the 1st CD, the CD loaded files [it hadn't before] and then showed 5 lines of gibberish on the blue setup screen.

I would really appreciate any assistance from someone on this so i can get on with the NT load - thanks in advance.

arfjay

 

[rdroske]

If the disk is really not damaged you can just boot from a 98 start up disk and use Fdisk to partition it.

Just don't accept the default "enable large disk support" when it asks.

Create and format a 2Gig partition that way, then NT will see it fine.

The 98 boot disk should also enable the CDRom so you can probably do the NT install without the floppies (no guarantees there though).

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried booting from the NT install CD instead of using the floppies?

I would not connect the SCSI tape drive and I'd disconnect the CD burner, and any other non-essential for install hardware - not the network card. The less the install has to cope with, the better its likely to perform.

If it still won't load, you have some sort of hardware problem (RAM, cpu, mobo, power supply, anything). Even if its been running 98.

 

[arfjay]

Thank you rdroske amd wolluf. I used a 98 boot floppy to scan and chkdsk and everything fine. It also told me that a 2 Gb Fat 16 partition HAD been created [NT Setup told me after 5 hours it was unsuccessful]. I have removed the CD burner, removed the SCSI card [to the DAT drive] and even closed the case.

It has now progressed to the point where after after booting from the floppies and the 1st CD there is no more gibberish but it gets to the blue screen where it advises in the bottom left corner 'restarting computer' and freezes. When I restart manually same thing and it will not reboot from the CD.

Some questions raised are:

** I have checked the compatability of some hardware with MS's list and found that the PC [a Seanix Richmond 813E is not listed but a Seanix Victoria 813E is a Level G 2.0 compatability - what does this mean? I am doing the above numbers from memory as am at home currently.

** Some release notes and other Tips I have researched advise very strongly not to Format a Fat 32 partition which is what the 98 boot floppy says it will do if I use it. If i start over and do it with this floppy will it work? You say not to use the 'large disk' capability - will it do a Fat 16 or Fat 32 partition this way? Should I go ahead and get the 98 disk to partition over the exisitng partition and see if this works?

** The release notes also advise strongly to have a modem hooked up when setting up, which I don't. I assume this is for registration purposes or do you thinkg it is a needful thing for Setup to work?

** I did format the drive with the 98 floppy AFTER the FAT 16 partition was done by the NT floppy - could this be a problem?

** If I wanted to get this drive to a clean unpartitioned state so I can start over, how would I do that?


Thanks again for your responses - I would appreciate more.

 

[rdroske]

You definitely can't use FAT32. The 98 boot disk will partition as FAT16 as long as you DO NOT enable large disk support. The default is to enable it.

Fdisk, delete partion will get it to a clean unpartitioned state.


The modem is only to send Dump data to MS support, at least I can't think of any other possible reason.

 

[arfjay]

Thank you rdroske

I will start over and prepare the drive with the 98 floppy then go to the NT floppies. Whichever way it goes, I will advise in another post to this thread.

 

[wolluf]

I still think you've got a hardware problem (or at least an incompatibility with NT). How many sticks of RAM? If > 1, try each on its own. You haven't got anything there that need special drivers? (I've just looked on the seanix site - there are IDE drivers - but for installation within windows. I can't see anything about the spec (richmond) that suggests it should be a problem for NT.

Did you try booting from the NT install CD instead of starting with floppies? (shouldn't really matter for issues you're having - but it is quicker!). I'm also of the belief that NT install's partitioning tools are better than fdisk.

You could try 'wiping' the drive with a binary zero fill (something like

http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm)

before you start.

 

[rdroske]

Actually I do also. Was suspecting the CD drive since hard disk checked out OK. Could be driver issue or even a bad NT CD as well.

Its not a SCSI CD by any chance? Didn't sound like it from previous posts, usually is only if hard drives are.

 

[arfjay]

Thanks again - I have just completed deleting, creating and formatting a new Primary Dos active system partition 2047 MB on the C: drive with the Win 98 floppy. Loaded setup from the 3 NT floppies then the CD #1 and it hung up exactly the same as before - on the blue Win NT Server Setup screen with 'restarting computer' bottom left corner.

During setup the list of devices found automatically were PC,display,keyboard, kybrd layout and Mouse. The NIC[plugged into switch and light on], CD Rom and Floppy drive were not mentioned. The CD R\W and Dat Tape drive are in the case but not connected to Motherboard.

Would the next step be to 'skip' autodetect and load drivers manually [assuming they will fit on floppies]?

Or - I could try to offload the original CDROM and Floppy from the broken server and reinstall in new PC, I am not that familiar with SCSI cards - I have a 'loaner' SCSI card to use to get the DAT Tape drive [ 50 pin] going in the new server when I get that far. The CD, Raid and Dat drives [except for floppies] in the server and PC connect to the Motherboard.

Is there some way of testing the Backoffice CD? I have the CDs for NT 4.5 upgrade as well - would it hurt to try CD 1 from 4.5?

I appreciate the help.

While I am awaiting a reponse I'll see if the connections on the server hardware are compatable.

 

[arfjay]

It is 8 hours later and I just realized that the PC I am trying to loan onto has a sound card built into the motherboard - I'll bet that is the problem. I'll try a format and load onto another older Seanix without the sound capability.

This PC only has a 4 GB harddrive but after Backoffice I really only want Arcserve [so I can get the DAT tape drive going and retrieve my data], Exchange, Office 97, networking, a network print driver [Xerox 332] and one program whose data is purged regularly. I do not need Pervasive, Maximizer, Accpac nor the bulk of the other data folders on the Server.

Anyway, I'll try the load on this one and see if the sound card was the culprit.

 

[rdroske]

If that is a SCSI CD Rom It could be the problem also.

Is it being seen when you boot from the 98 startup disk?

I would try the setup that way anyways, it would save you time compared to the 3 boot floppy method.

Boot from 98 startup and if CD rom is available run

CDRomDrive:\I386\WINNT.exe /s:CDRomDrive:\I386 /b

 

[arfjay]

I did as you suggested using E: as the CDrom driveletter and everything worked fine - Backoffice loaded to WINNT and then asked me to enter to reboot which I did ... and ended up at the same blue screen with 'MS Windows NT Ver 4.0 SP3 System Processor 255 MB Memory' at the top and the gibberish appeared and the Harddrive continually flickered. The gibberish is 3 lines and starts off with ' M 18 Csisrs F ricd 24 ie .. none of it is repeated .. the last entries are Ts: 2ks Fcl 1ks Sqor ks .

The only hardware connecrted is the CD drive.

What suggestions now?? I have left this screen up if you ask for detail.

 

[rdroske]

I'm pretty much out of ideas to get NT on it. Really sounds like a hardware issue at this point,bad memory was mentioned before and is starting to sound more likely.

I've seen them blue screen with the NT dump at the point you are getting to (usually inaccessible boot device). But gibberish like that? Not much help there.

I'd take a look at the BIOS config just in case anything looked funny in there but you'd probably be getting boot messages if so, try to download the latest BIOS flash upgrade for it just in case its had some bugs fixed, look for a diagnostic program for it....

Unless I could find diagnostic tools for it at this point I'd probably try to put WIN 98 back on it on it. It might help either rule out or track down hardware issues.

 

[arfjay]

Thank you so much rdroske for your input on this. Apart from this issue it is a good box so I think I'll put a 2 GB harddrive [it is new] into it for NT and use the existingn HD for the other stuff if I can. My other option apart from buying something is to use 3-4 year old boxes with 4 GB HDs in them and I'd rather not at this point. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[arfjay]

FYI - I finally gave the box to a techie I've known for 6 years and she googlesearched an article relating to NT 4.0 incorrect partition problems and ended up downloading a file from Service Pack 4 which allowed NT to properly recognize the partition and therefore finally load.

Thanks again for all your help.

 

[rdroske]

Please explain how a file from service pack could help a machine that had no NT installed?