I'm currently beta testing windows 2000 and I also have os/2 and windows 98 installed in my computer. I was wondering if there is a chance to load windows 2000 without formatting the hd and loading everything again...

Hi, Ray
I have read a rumor about W2k saying it is blatantly unsafe to use together with Boot
Manager, whether from OS/2 or from Partition Magic. It seems W2k will complain
over BM's partition being faulty and format it whatever you respond in the dialog.
This happens every time w2k is loaded, they say. I forwarded this information to
Microsoft Sweden, and they said they had never seen "this" (I am not quite sure if
they meant Boot Manager, this nasty behavior or OS/2) but would not believe it
could be true, because NT has never done anything without asking first. Well, if it
disregards the user's reply that is indeed a cheap courtesy!

Now, I have never seen W2k and probably never will try it myself. Also, I do not
know if this rumor is in fact true. But be warned, if you plan on using it with Boot
Manager. One can imagine it must pretty soon become a serious pain to have to
repeatedly reformat and reinstall BM whenever Windows has been booted. Perhaps
LILO is less affected? Who knows...

The rumor concerns "Gold code" which I am told is at least very near the version
that will ship shortly.

Hope this helps,
Roland Nilsson
Sweden

Original Message
Name: ray
Date: December 28, 1999 at 10:51:09
Subject: OS2 installation on windows 2000, need so info???
Comment:

I'm currently beta testing windows 2000 and I also have
os/2 and windows 98 installed in my computer. I was
wondering if there is a chance to load windows 2000
without formatting the hd and loading everything again...

Rumor is correct. I learned that hard way. W2K destroy Boot Manager without asking and
without warning. During installation it said that boot manager is found and must be desabled and reenabled after installation. Doing that you will loose both W2K and boot manager.

Did you RTFM? It seems maybe this is just like other Windows install's: they want to boot directly during installation so they disable BootManager by setting the Win partition active. Run Fdisk or other utility to set BM partition active again.

But the rumour I heard says that W2k *reformatted* the whole BM partition -- if so, how can it be reenabled?

I don't understand. Sorry, I have no opportunity to check for myself. Have no W2k, and no plan to get it either!

Wish Microsoft could clear this up -- if it isn't already in the readmes. Quite sure you did read them?

During W2K installation BM (if exists) is marked inactive.
I tryed some more possibilities like marking W2K partition activ but no vail. W2K allways found BM. Since BM is in MBR W2K rewrite MBR and that means the end of BM. If you check with OS/2 fdisk Bm is still there but useless. Also DOS fdisk showes BM. Reenabling BM leave PC dead. Only solution restart from floppy.

OK, seems pretty dead alright. Guess BM was in fact reformatted, then and only the empty partition remains.

But actually, the Boot Manager I am talking about sits in its own small partition, either at the beginning or the end of a disk. Comes with OS/2 or Partition Magic, I believe, and perhaps Caldera Linux and maybe some more s/w. So the MBR is not really an issue here. That would be if you put LILO there, but if it's overwritten it's gone altogether.

Even more urgent that Microsoft addresses this problem, is my thought. But maybe they are fully occupied with the other 63,000 bugs until launch on Thursday :-p

Makes no difference. I try also that but W2K destroy also BM at the end of free space. No luck.

Can you reinstall bootmanager
from OS/2 installation disks ??

Yes, you can restore BM, but then you loose W2K. If not then with new W2K start Bm is gone.

Latest news. WarpCast archives holds at least two relevant articles.
WarpCast: 14 January 2000 - Caution installing Windows 2000 with
Boot Manager:
http://www.os2ss.com/warpcast/wc4693.html
is a description of the problem, and
WarpCast: 16 March 2000 - Win2000 Killing OS/2 Boot Manager:
http://www.os2ss.com/warpcast/wc4971.html
includes the following tip: Windows 2000 RC2 did not destroy Boot Manager the way the final release version does. The problem has been traced to a single Win2000 file. The file is FASTFAT.SYS. It lives in the WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS directory and the WINNT\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE directoy.

Hope this helps. It seems Microsoft was after all really going in for killing BM... Or is this just one of the 2**16 more or less known bugs in their latest release? Look a bit like a regular MS "feature";-)

I tried BM from PowerQuest, ver. 3.05 (currently they call it IBM Boot Manager) on HDs up to 8G - when installing NT 4 and W2K PRO final release. In both cases, the multiboot was in Win98 (or Win98 SE).
Setup of WinNT or W2K does inactivate the BM. Reinstalling the BM prevents NT or W2K from booting while other OS in a different partition will run fine.
For NT, I did succeeded to reenable the BM by means of repairing the NT (FAT16) partition.
With Win2000, I already do not experiment with reenabling BM. My point?
Go to Microsoft Tech Net pages. Microsoft confirmed (I'm not sure if this is a bug or something intentional) that W2K verifies the boot partition signature and won't boot if it does not match what is stored in BOOT.INI. There is a suggested workaround - to manually disk edit the MBR and, maybe, Boot Records as well. As for me, it is worth efforts only if desperately needed. Otherwise, W2K is now (at least MS claims it is) capable of adding many other (but UNIX or Linux are not listed there) OSs to its own Boot Manager.
Also on the Tech Net, you'll find reports on successful installation of Linux on a system with W2K already installed. There, LILO screen appears first, then W2K BM is allowed to say whatever it wanted to. But I have not tried Linux.
Too, I can't say if Win98 or WinNT can be successfully installed after W2K and thereafter added to its BM. MS do not recommend this but I've read, some did it fine.
Good luck!

LILO boots w2k and os/2 perfectly with the loader = /boot/os2_d.b row added to lilo.conf file, but yes ! M$ did it again. W2k destroys BM in every sense.
Not a "bug", but an aggresive approach to the existance of other OS
We will manage !!

My PC uses Boot Magic from PM 5 and it boot Win98 / Windows 2000 Prof / OS/2 Warp 3.0 and also has booted various flavours of Linux;Caldera 2.4,Suse 6.3,the only one I could'nt get to work was Red Hat 6.2(Zoot)had to create a boot diskette; then that even worked. Maybe because I read and article in PC Answers(UK Mag)on Multi-Boot master class - They had Win98,Win2k,BeOs 4.5,and Mandrake Linux;....

go figure.....Rich

I installed Win2000 under the OS/2 bootmanager. The bootmanager partition is "repaired" on every boot of Win2000. I copied the FASTFAT.SYS form the last beta version into \system\drivers and in \system\dllcache (this gives some warinings, check berfore rebooting, wethe it's done or not). Make a reboot the verify everithing's o.k. Then boot Warp 4 from Diskettes. Delete the rest of the "repaired" bootmamanger and reiinstall it and add win2000 to the menu. Thats all. To avoid problems with Win2000 (and also WinNT) create the Win200 (or NT) partition as the first on disk and add bootmanager as the second partition. Add the ohter operating systems as OS/2. This avoids problems for starting Win2000, since it remembers the order You created the partitions.

I'am not sure, wether the older fastfat.sys does any harm. But I think it's only for FAT partitions, wich I never use under Win2000.

Good luck!
Fritz

After reading about copying the FASTFAT.SYS
from Win 2000 beta (RC2) to %SystemRoot%\system32 and %SystemRoot%\system32\dllcache,
and doesn´t have that beta version,
I copied the FASTFAT.SYS from my NT4 partition (SP6).
It works !!!
Hope this Tip will help :)
Franky