when i attempt to install NT4 the initial installation works fine....then when i restart to continue the installation i get the following message, "Error loading operating system". i have read the problem is most likely that NT doesn't recognize my 120GB hard drive. in fact, when i begin the installation, above the area where the current partitions are shown, it indicates that the drive is 8063MB. obviously that is incorrect. how do i get it to recognize the hard drive. i have read that it is possible, but there is no explanation as to how....at least nothing that i can understand. windows XP was previously installed on the machine, and i would like to eventually reinstall it afterwards in a dual-boot configuration, but i need to get NT on there first. thanks for any help.

NT has a few little irritations to be awrae of: It cannot handle drives over 8Gig without an updated atapi/sys (present in SP4 and later) - also available as download from M$ etc. (and John Savills's site - see below). Consequently without the update all you see of the drive is 8Gig max. It cannot create a Primay partition during installation greater than 4Gig - be it fat16/ntfs. Even if you want ntfs it's limited to 4Gig; this becaue NT initially creates it as fat16 (4Gig max) then converts it to ntfs a little later in the process... A few links/references to help you get it all up and running; saves posting all the details here... http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13894 http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13922 (I think the info in the link immediately above was posted there originally by Wanderer - to give him well due credits). http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13876 All courtesy of John Savills faqs at: http://www.windows2000faq.com - installations section. An excellent resource for all members of the NT family (NT/W2K/XP). Note that it is often necessary to apply the updated atapi.sys twice - one at the start and again towards the end of setup. I think JS comments on this too. Also presumably the bios is OK for a drive that size? That you had XP installed previously does tend to indicate bios is OK... Have the atapi.sys (updated) on a floppy and to hand, apply as required. A trawl for the updated the updated atapi.sys via google will also bring up other sources for it - if it's not available at M$ and/or JS??? And if you have SP4 then copy it from there to a floppy?