I was going to install NT Server on my PC last night, but ran into problems. I formatted the hard drive. Then I made the 3 startup disks. I then proceeded through the process. Everything was fine until it was copying files. The setup could not find about 30 or 40 files. It let me ESC through them, but then NT would not boot. I tried it 3 or 4 times, with the same results each time. The install cd I am using is a Microsoft Select CD and has worked before on other computers. Any help would be appreciated on this subject. Thanks. John

Try cleaning the CD. Also try using the WINNT /B setup using a DOS disk w/ CD drivers.

What do you mean by using DOS disk for the cd rom drivers? I was using a Win 98 BOot disk to start the PC with CD-ROM support. Maybe this will not work. It is a old, slow CD-ROM drive, I was thining maybe that has something to do with it. I do not have any drivers for the drive. I might be able to switch the drive with a Mitsumi 32X that I do have the drivers for. Thanks for your help. John

Hi John, This problem also displays symptoms of non-compatible RAM or a motherboard that can't handle the processor... What OS was running previously?

Give us the specs of your system...for NT, Idealy (these are not the minimum requirements) you should have a pentium 100 or higher and 64 meg and at least 1 gig or more hd space...Assuming you are starting fresh, you boot up with your W98 boot disk...use fdisk, and delete all partitions, reboot, create a new primary partition and do NOT choose large drive support...that will format your hd with FAT32 and it will NOT work with NT... Now boot up again with your W98 boot disk and format your hd with "format c:/s this will copy 4 files from the W98 boot disk to the hd...one of those files is a generic driver to access the CD-ROM...Now boot up again WITHOUT the W98 boot disk...you should be booting up from your hd...put you NT cd in the drive...to to D:\ prompt and enter winnt.exe...you to NOT need the 3 NT boot floppies, but you can use them if you wish... Now, if you have a problem getting all the files off the CD, you may have an issue with the CD your NT install is on... Good Luck

I was originally running Windows 98 SE on the machine. The PC is a Pentium 133, 72 meg RAM, 853 MB Hard drive. I have done a FDISK and deleted all partitions. I then put on the system files. Now I could boot to the hard drive. I then put on cd-rom drivers and am now setting up NT with the winnt/b command. I will see what happens this time.

Steve's post is good info. WINNT can be run several ways. 1. The cd is bootable. Your BIOS boot sequence must be set to include the cd. 2. Boot from diskette that supports your cd drive. Explore to /i386 directory on cd. Run WINNT. 3. Boot from the NT boot disks. 4. Copy the /i386 directory from the cd to your harddrive, then run WINNT. This eliminates the cd at least during the install. If the cd is not NT compliant, you'll have to replace it for any future use. That system is a bit light in the specs, but does meet MS's minimums. In any case, prepare your hard drive with FDISK AND FORMAT. For the switches used with WINNT, type WINNT /?. If you have the user's manual you will find more detail and preparation considerations. I had same problem few years ago and copying the /i386 directory solved what I suspect was slow system and cd problem. Open this for more: http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/support/faqs/InstallFAQ.asp. Hope this helps.