[clue-tech] [OT?]How do I multiboot Windows NT 3.51 and Windows2000?

[Jim Ockers]

Hi,

Contrary to some of the opinions you've seen on the list I think this
kind of question is perfectly well suited to CLUE-TECH.  I have asked
Windows questions on this forum before and received helpful advice.

I should also say that the knowledge/understanding of Windows NT
internals has helped my knowledge/understanding of general PC OS
concepts.  In fact I regularly try stuff that doesn't work properly
on Linux using Windows NT/2K/XPto see if it's an OS/driver issue.  I've
found a few interesting things about Linux this way, including some
significant limitations in the Linux OS.

But I digress.

> Hi, I'm getting a NetServer LH3R with 6 9GB SCSI drives installed and 2
> Pentium III 500MHz processors along with 1GB of RAM and 2 10/100 NICs and I
> would like to multiboot on it Windows NT 3.51 and Windows2000. I've tried
> googling around for information on this but could not find a good guide on
> doing this. Could someone here please provide me with the information I nee=
> d
> to successfully multiboot these OSes? (e.g. partitioning setup, order of
> installation, etc) Thanks in advance! :-)

Generally I found the boot loaders in subsequent versions of Windows NT
to be backward compatible.  They definitely are not forward compatible.
Also Windows 2K/XP has a new version of NTFS that NT 3.51 cannot under-
stand.

However I'm pretty sure that 2K/XP can understand the old NTFS filesystem.
Therefore I recommend:

1. Partition the disk using NT 3.51's installer.  Make a partition for
NT 3.51 and one for W2K.

2. Install NT 3.51 on the partition of your choice.

3. Istall W2K on the partition of your choice.

Thus you will be using W2K's bootloader to boot NT 3.51 but it should work.
Also you can probably use a single partition and a \WINNT director for
NT3.51 and a \WINDOWS directory for W2K.  Don't let it change the
filesystem to NTFS5 if you do this, because NT 3.51 won't be able to
read the NTFS5 superblock (to use a unix filesystem buzzword).

Beware that the W2K installer may try to "upgrade" your existing installation.

Good luck as you learn about NT 3.51.  One of the worst things about
NT 3.50 was the complete lack of laptop hardware support, which made
software installation very difficult because in those days most laptops
did not have CD-ROM drives either.  At least NT 3.51 had a rudimentary
point enabler for most serial PCMCIA cards and some network cards.

Hope this helps,
Jim

-- 
Jim Ockers, P.Eng. (ockers at ockers.net)
Contact info: please see http://www.ockers.net/
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