NT installaton: Missing Operating system 2

[bErEsTh]

(p3, 512megs of Ram). Trying to install OS

I formatted HDD through NT setup and dos window, as well as a variety of disk utilities. Says OS was installed properly and I can see through DOS window that the Winnt directory is there.
Cleared bios
Why does it continue to say missing operating system. Master boot record cleared through fdisk? Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

[wolluf]

More info would be useful - particularly size of disk and service pack level of NT install CD. And exactly what you did/how you installed - is it fat or ntfs filestore?

To install NT you don't need a variety of approaches to format drive - just use NT setup's built in utilities (to remove/create & format partitions). NT install disks before SP4 can only see hard drives up to c. 8GB - and largest partition you can create with NT install is 4GB (special fat16 - larger cluster size). If you want a larger system partition, need to slave drive in another (prefably NT - but 2k/XP will do) machine & create it there -

http://www.htl-steyr.ac.at/~morg/drivers/NT_Atapi/

has a driver you can use with NT install to gain access to larger drives.

 

[ReddLefty]

Check to make sure your boot partition is ACTIVE with either FDISK (DOS) or 3rd party tools like Partition Magic. When you partition with the NT setup software, it sometimes does not set the partition to active and you cannot boot a FAT partition without it being an Active partition.



"In space, nobody can hear you click..."

 

[bErEsTh]

I did use the built in utilities from NT4. No service pack yet caused not installed. The partion was an NTFS. Disk size was 10G and I set active partition to largestpossible and active. I do have a ? can u boot a partiotn that isnt active that is NTFS unlike FAT? I was unsucessful thru either NT disk buit in utility or theu fdisk. Can it be a bad HDD? Hope that is enuff info to continue trbleshoot? Thanks

 

[wolluf]

bErEsTh - I still don't inderstand what you've done - you didn't say. This is how I would install NT pre-SP4 (you can get install CD's which include SP4 - which can see larger drives).

1. Go to that website I linked and download atapi.exe (

http://www.htl-steyr.ac.at/~morg/drivers/NT_Atapi/).

Follow instructions to put driver atapi.sys onto a floppy disk. Boot the machine from the NT install CD (or from the 3 install floppies if you prefer - the CD method is faster) - then follow the atapi instructions for use (ie, press S when prompted and put the floppy in the drive for install to pick up).

2. When you get to the bit where you choose the install location, use the NT tools to create a new partition to install into. As I said, max size is 4GB (special FAT16), which can be converted to NTFS. This should be big enough for an NT installation anyway (in fact 2GB is usually plenty - you can just create a second partition with the rest of the space).

3. Now just let the install complete (assume your familiar with installing drivers for NT once its up, which is generally not plug and play).

If you want a larger install partition (eg, whole 10GB), you'll need to create a partition either with something like Partition Magic rescue disks or by slaving drive in another machine (NT/2k/XP) and creating it there - but you'll still need the upgraded atapi.sys driver.

Please post back if this doesn't sort you out.

 

[Lemon13]

No service pack yet caused not installed" - when you boot from cd the first blue screen says microsoft windows nt uniprocessor....is there any sp mentioned?
how does your boot.ini looks like?
"Master boot record cleared through fdisk?" - take a boot disk (9x/me), boot from it and start fdisk. try to create partitions. if after the reboot the partition isn´t created your disk/mbr is gone.

 

[bErEsTh]

Thanks to all. It is up and working.

 

[Lemon13]

and what was the solution, it might help others too!

 

[sabsido22]

I've only just begun using this forum. So I thought I'd pose my question here since I am also experiencing the "Missing Operating System" (MOS) problem. I'm not sure if the above solutions will address my problem, so please please confirm with me.

I have a new laptop that came with Windows XP installed. I wanted it to have Windows 2000 instead, so I rebuilt it (the laptop) from my company's standard CD Win2K OS Build. Now I get the dreaded error message "MOS" and I can't seem to get past it. Can someone help me understand what's going on and how I can solve it. This has not happened to me before.

 

[wolluf]

Couple of pointers - there are separate forums for 2k and XP (forum616 and forum779) - this is the NT forum.

Also, you should start a new thread for your problem. You'd be best posting in 2k forum.

But some questions:-

What does 'I rebuilt it (the laptop) from my company's standard CD Win2K OS Build.' involve? I presume its not using a 2k install CD - so is it some kind of image (like Ghost)? And was it designed to work on the type of laptop you've used it on? (images like this tend to be hardware specific).

You might get it up and running with a repair reinstall - if you have a 2k install CD available -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;292175&Product=win2000

PS. Why replace XP with 2k - they're very similar (you can make XP look like 2k if you don't like its GUI), and XP has a few extras (and will be supported longer).