Hi My girlfriend recently bought me an IBM 380Z notebook (second hand). It has Windows 98 running OK as well as, what appears to be Windows NT Server 4 software saved to C:. The problem I have is that the CD for WIN NT4.0 did not come with it, neither did Windows 98. I have tried and tried and tried to get the NT software running via WINNT.exe. This enabled me to create the three boot disks and half-way through the loading of the third one the following message appears: "Set up is unable to locate the hard drive partition prepared by the MS-DOS partition of Set-Up. When you run the MS-DOS Windows NT Set-Up program you must specify a temporary drive that is supported by NT" I have used PartitionMagic to create a primary partition (as drive D:) and have ran the NT Boot disks again to no luck. The laptop is linked to another PC via "peer-to-peer network" using a crossover cable (10 mbps network card on PC and Netgear EA 101 USB adapter on the laptop). Adapters used are: Dial-Up Adapter and NETGEAR EA101 USB Ethernet Adapter. Also Client for Microsoft Networks, TCP/IP, NetBEUI, File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks, IPX/SPX-compatible Protocol, PCMCIA Card Services. The following are also active: 1. An Analog X proxy server 4.02 to share the modem connection. 2. Norton Crashguard, and 3. McAfee Guard Dog. SYSTEM INFORMATION 1. Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.1998 2. IE 5 5.00.2014.0216 3. GenuineIntel Pentium(r) II Processor Intel MMX(TM) Technology 4. 96MB RAM 5. 67% system resources free 6. Windows-managed swap file on drive C (297MB free) 7. Available space on drive C: 297MB of 1886MB (FAT32) 8. Available space on drive D: 1806MB of 1807MB (FAT) I know this is probably too much useless info but it’s all I can gather at the moment as I have been battling with this for quite some time now. Suggestions anyone. Please, please help this is driving me mad. Thanx in advance. sanjaque

Your problem maybe more basic then you think. A lot of units come with a choice of OS, '98 or NT you have to boot the unit with a dos disk and copy the pre-installed data to another location for use later. Otherwise it usually installs the OS picked by the user and deletes the other. If you unit was unplugged or powered off just before finishing that could be your problem. BUT, given it was SERVER not worksation I'm prone to think your laptop was either bought used or some computer shop "GEEK" was playing with it before it was sold. Check for an I386 directory and try to run Winnt.exe from there, else give it up unless you actually get the software.

Based on the error description, chances are, win98 was installed on your C: using FAT32. Since NT needs to put its boot files on the C:, it is unable to locate the partition because NT does not support FAT32. Perhaps, a program like Partition magic may be able to bail you out. Good luck!!

Your problem is this: 1. You have a computer with software you do not own! i.e. Win 98 and Win NT 2. Obtain the software, fdisk the drive and create two partions. Load 98 first on one partion and NT on the other. DUAL BOOT!