Hello, I´m having a small problem and I hope you guys can give me ideas. I have a Win2K machine with two hard disks. I decided, for testing purposes, to install WinNT4 on the second hard disk. To accomplish this, I used PartitionMagic 8.0 to set up a 800Mb FAT partition on the second hard disk at the begining of it, just as the NT installation requires. Then I configured BootMagic and whala!, I am able to boot from both partitions. Okay, that was fine. Anyway, as the NT installation wouldn´t be able to install onto the second hard disk, I temporarily reconnected it so as it would look like the first one. Then I installed NT and everything went fine and reconnected the hard disks to their previous configuration (remember, Win2K on HD #0, WinNT4 on HD #1). The problem is, now everytime I select to boot from the NT4 partition I get a message saying "NTDETECT Failed". Reconnecting the hard disk to match the installation environment allows the OS to boot up fine, so the problem is in no way related to file corruption. BUT!, I don´t want to open the computer and switch cables every time I want to change OS´es, so I thought there might be something I can do to make NTDETECT run flawlessly. The first and only thing I tried was to modify the BOOT.INI file so that all lines saying "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT" were modified to say "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT". This however had no effect at all. I also tried the repair option on the original NT CD, but it doesn't detect an installation at all. Does anyone know what can I do to fix this? Thanks in advance Andrés

you misunderstood the NT requirement for a fat partition. It has to be from the 1st disks primary bootable partition. When you installed NT when the drive was the first and then moved it back to 2nd position not only is NT's registry pointers concerning drive letters messed but the bios is going to the w2k drive to boot not the 2nd drive with the fat. Only way I can think of that your system will work is to make the 2nd drive the boot drive in the bios. Otherwise start fresh with a small fat on the primary drive so you can multiboot multiple OS's without this issue.

Alright, actually when I said "reconnected" I meant I opened the computer and switched cables (and jumpers). The BIOS´ only duty was to detect the new positions. Also, when I boot from the NT partition the driver letter C:, exactly as it was when I installed it being the only connected hard disk. So it´s not a drive letter issue either. Any ideas?

Huh? When you switched the cables, even if the bios is set to auto, you changed the boot order and drive letter enumeration. See here http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;51978 So what you are doing is trying to use the W2K boot loader/boot.ini to mount NT from the 2nd disk. Like I said your drive letter enumeration is wrong in NT now since you swapped the drives. Easy check. Reverse the cables so NT is the boot drive, boot into NT and use regedit to check for drive letters. You have two issues here. Drive letters [first primary partition is enumerated on the first drive then the first primary on the second drive...] but this isn't what is stopping you from booting NT. It's just NT registry pointers are messed up. So using the W2K boot.ini and assuming NT is on the 2nd drives primary partition the correct entry should be "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT". The rdisk (1) should indicate the 2nd drive. This should get you booting but will not take care of the almost 4000 drive letter entries in the NT registry.

That´s what I did and I said so in my first posting, wanderer. And NT also has a boot.ini file, which is the only one I modified. My 2K partition works wonderfully well already ;) Andrés

You know what, I am missing something. You are still using bootmagic. NT is not fooled by bootmagic's hiding drives. It still knows that there is a primary disk so you will have drive enumeration issue but you just want to boot. I have used system commander for years and bootmagic. I had problems with bootmagic and to accomplish some other tasks I came up with and wrote this http://www.computing.net/howto/simple/usingpqboot/ I am suspecting your issue is not with nt loading but bootmagic. I wonder if it is in reality using the w2k ntdetect and boot.ini and that is why you can't boot NT. Especially since NT boots fine if you swap the cables. I am assuming you are editing the boot.ini back to original with rdisk (0)since the drive in now in the (0) position. Only thing I can suggestion at this point is uninstall bootmagic and add the line like we discussed to your W2k boot.ini. That should get you booted into NT. If you had a fat16 partition for your c: you could reinstall NT to the 2nd disk after coping to a folder the w2k versions of ntdetect and ntldr. The install on Nt would overwrite these and your W2k boot would not work. Easy fix is boot up on a boot disk and copy the backed up files to the root again and now everything would work. But you don't have a fat16 partition which is the requirement of NT install on the primary disk.

Good Joshua, good. Right now I´m out of time to try these ideas because this Monday I am going to be promoted to chief administrator of a whole building (yooooohooooo!!!!!!) and my "to do" list is still far from finished, but as soon as I have time, I´ll work on this and post the results. Thanks! Andrés