OK I think I made a mistake. I FDISKed this brand new DELL system running Win98 (with a 95 boot) with 4 ~2GB FAT 16 partitions. I then wanted to load on NT. I get to the point where you can re-partion the drive, and all the drives were reported as 'UNFORMATTED OR DAMAGED'. So I deleted the drives (including the C:\ "system" partition. Then I set a new primary and extended partitions. I set a 1GB C: and 8GB logical and allowed the setup to format the C: as FAT. I restarted the setup. When I got to the same point were you select the install partion the drives were OK, (ie C:\ = FAT and D:\= New Unformated. I let NT install on C:\ and when it reboots (to run the GUI for the first time) it hangs on a blank screen after the RAM is checked. It has done this SEVERAL times, (even if i try to load win 98) I think deleting the system partion in NT had something to do with this. Please help!! Thanks in advance.

Try using a Partition Magic boot disk and remove all the partitions to start clean. Use a DOS disk and type FDISK /mbr to clear any old entries. Now use the 3 boot floppies that come with NT and you will be able install it. If you want to dual boot with Windows 98 then install Win98 first then NT. You will need to format the drive in FAT then use a CD-ROM boot disk to access the Setup for Windows 98.

Still no luck, I am going to try to load win98 and dual boot NT. Thanks for the suggestion though. Anyone else know what the source of my problem is?

Hi, may be you have an UDMA66-Controller in your system for which NT has no Drivers. At the Point of Installation where you can add Mass Storage Drivers press F5 to add the Driver contained on Your Mainboard-CDROM. Now NT should be able to boot the first time from your Disk. You also should download the Atapi-Fix from Microsoft to make NT be able to support disks >8GB. good luck...

I don't think its a hardware driver/controler problem. In fact, before I attempted to convert this sytem to NT I successfully completed this task on an IDENTICAL dell system. As an alternative method how do you setup a dual boot of NT and 98. Win 98 is up and running now. Thanks for your suggestions... keep em coming.

I'm fed up... I am loading on windows 2000 Thanks for your help though

NT will automatically dual boot with 98. It detects it and adds it to the boot menu. That is why 98 needs to be on there first. Alernatively you can use a third party boot manager software.