My question regards multibooting. I am running Win98, WinNT, and W2K. I haven't installed the Internet on any of them yet. An article I followed said to get WinNT up to service pack 6 level before installing W2K, which I did. If I install dial up networking under NT and it asks for the NT CD, will this undo SP6? And if so, will W2K be affected as a result? Each OS is in a logical drive, but all boot from C:, the primary partition. My fear is if SP6 is undone and reapplied, then the W2K boot files will have been written over, requiring a re-install of W2K? Is this correct? Right now, I'm thinking of putting Internet on W2K only and not all three OSs because of this uncertainty. Is this justified? Thanks for any advice/help.

If you are prompted for the NT disk... do as it says.. but when you are asked to reboot.. say no... Apply the SP6 once again then reboot. No harm.

Apart from the NT/2000 boot files, there's no connection between the OS's whatsoever - they're on separate partitions. You certainly don't need SP6 on NT before installing/updating W2K. Only a full reinstall of NT or W2K is likely to foul things up, and only if you get it wrong. As far as the NT installation is concerned, W2K is just another entry in the boot.ini file.

The general rule with both NT and W2k is that if updates (like DUN or network protocols) are installed from the CD, the relevant service pack must be reapplied.

Slight correction?

M$ advise have NT4 SP4 or later installed prior to installing W2K (in a dual/multi-boot). This is to allow NT4 to access any ntfs5 areas (W2K uses ntfs4, NT4 uses ntfs4).

If there are any ntfs4 areas on a given system then W2K will forcibly convert them to ntfs5 (you have no say in the matter); as a result they will not be accessible to NT4 without SP4 or later; again SP4 should be installed prior to installing W2K.

http://www.winnetmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=8824&pg=2

discusses this in more detail; suggest check the whole article?

The above is from the Summer 2000 edition of the windows2000 magazine:

http://www.winnetmag.com/Issues/Index.cfm?IssueID=396

which covers W2K in several articles.

Also re-installing NT4 after adding in W2K may not be an easy option - depending on how the system-partition (where the boot/start-up files reside) is configured; this is also discussed a little in the above edition...

My boot files are on C:, the primary partition. If SP6 for WinNT has to be re-installed, will this mess up the boot files on a multiboot machine in any way? I've noticed that when I start NT, it is using the W2K NTLDR file. I know this because I noticed the "Starting up Windows" progress bar at the bottom of the screen when starting NT. The same bar appears when starting W2K. If I make a copy of the boot files on the root of C: and then do the things under NT which undoes the SP6 and reapply...could I then reboot to either Win98 or NT and replace the boot files? I'm afraid that adding NT components and reapplying the Service Pack will effect the boot files on a multiboot machine...but if they are replaced with a back up may not...what do you think?

When NT is installed along with dos/'9x it provides the boot-loader etc. When W2K goes in after NT4 it replaces the NT4 boot-loader/mbr etc. with the W2K versions - which is why you now see W2K as the controlling OS.

(re-)Installing an sp should not affect the boot-files/sequence etc. Each OS is independant of the others; and the boot/start-up files will/should not be touched by an sp. I've frequently added an sp for NT4 and W2K (in a multi-boot) without affecting the other OS or boot-files.

Trvlr,
That being the case...that the boot files will not be effected...what about the conversion from ntfs 4 to ntfs 5 which occurs after W2K install??? ...does that stay unaffected also????
In otherwords, it should be OK to install NT networking components, reapply the service pack for NT, and still have the same multiboot setup and file systems you started with? Thanks.

Yes to boot-files; they will (should) be unaffected.

Adding in network items to NT4 after installing W2K - I'm not sure you will be able to. Certainly if the NT boot-partition was ntfs4 originally and is now ntfs5 I doubt you can. As I understand it W2K effectively puts NT4 (as ntfs4 initially) into a deep-freeze mode (see the article/s - I posted their links earlier). This would seem to mean that not only can you 'not' repair NT4 (now) in an ntfs5 area, but you 'cannot' add in components either (once W2K installed) if NT boot-partition (where the OS itself resides) now = ntfs5.

Re-applying a given SP is 'a bit' like a repair, in that you are replacing missing/corrupted (sp) files that may have been affected by the add-ins that followd the sp initial installation? (Similarly applying a givne sp for the first time.)

In other word NT4 is frozen in time. The only option is to totally remove it (reformat the partition via NT4), and then re-install NT as you want it to be; after-which run W2K setup/repair routine to restore W2K mbr/boot-files, W2K access, and the dual-boot.

If NT4 = fat16 (4Gig limit) then there should be no problems; it's only the ntfs issue that seems to freeze NT4...? I have generally (usually/'always') set my NT4 boot-partition to fat16 (4Gig max); data as ntfs4 or fat16 (fat16 as 2Gig or 2-4Gig size - depending on other OSs present).

When I set up a multi-boot that includes NT and W2K (amongst others), I ensured NT was the way I wanted it first; i.e. sp6a, network items etc. installed. My NTWS and Svr are currently fat16 (4Gig each), so I shouldnt have any problems anyway; but I was playing safe...

Again I encourage you to read the articles I linked for you; it says it with more experience/authority than I have.