I have a 60 GB HD with windows XP installed on it. I have used Partition Magic to create a 2GB new partition before C: (at the beginning of the disk) and I would like to install on this new partition Win NT. When the installation program of Win NT tries to format the new partition a fatal error occurs. I think the problem is that NT recognise only HD up to 8GB. How can I do to have NT and XP on the same PC? It is very very urgent! Thanks a lot.

I haven't gone this route (NT4 in after XP, or W2K on a single partition drive). I usually allow for these possibilites when seting up a drive initially; which having said it should be still reasonably simple to achieve in your situation? The basic theory is reasonably straightforward/simple...? **************** Re' NT and larger drives: When you install NT to a drive over 7.8/8Gig you need to install the updated ATAPI.SYS file; otherwise it will recognise a max of 7.8/8Gig. of the drive. The file is part of SP-4 and later; can also be download variously. The file is applied/installed during early part of setup (and frequently again at the end). John Savill details it all for you at: http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13894 ********* Presumably this 'new'/additional partition "is" a Primary...; if it's not a Primary then no way you will install NT there... (Also was it by chance preformatted as fat32 by mistake? If so then that's another issue to address.) Presuming it is a Primary (and not fat32 already) - is it set as the active Primary when installing (and formatting for) NT. Possibly you left the original XP Primary as active by mistake? Again presuming it is a Primary (and set as active), you could format (as fat16 - but not ntfs5 which is what XP provides...) via XP Disk Admin tools. Afterwhich install NT to it (with the partition still set as active). You're then left with the "how to complete the dual-boot with XP". This can be done using PM's Boot-Magic util, or there is a "relatively easy" tweak/hack as it were to achieve it without the use of a boot-util. You may prefer to use the PM Boot-Magic util to this end (if so then read the manual carefully)? If not using Boot-Magic then post back and I'll dig out my notes/references re' another way to achieve it (without the add-in boot-util). One other item to be aware of: is the system (as is) OK for NT regarding drivers various? Wise to verify the MoBo etc. is NT compliant... (check the appropriate web-site/s).

You will find the atapi.sys method does not work on many systems. You will get a message saying this device does not exist on this system. You also NEVER want to exceed the 7.8gig limit of system/boot partition. This is due to a NTFS/bios boot bug in NT. Otherwise you will end up with a nonbooting NT system. Note that you can not install NT out of the box to anything larger then 4gig. If you can still boot XP after this "partition creation" it is not a partition NT will see. Here are a couple of options I have written: http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13922 http://www.computing.net/howto/simple/usingpqboot/ My recommendation is after the PM creation look at the partition with fdisk. If is sees it as the first active primary partition you should be able to install. Next step would be to boot the NT cd and use it to format the 2gig partition. If you get this far you should be able to complete the install. Of course XP won't work anymore. Not to worry. Boot the XP cd and choose recovery console. Use the utilities fixmbr and fixboot to correct and get back the XP with a multiboot of NT. Post back if you have problems.