Help Installing 2000 On A Compaq!

[ThePunkerGuy]

Ok, here is the situation.. i have my friends compaq presario case, motherboard, cpu (1.1gig athlon) and ram (384mb). Now i put my own 60gig 5400rpm maxtor in it. I put the 60gig in one of my other computers and formated it clean with FAT32. Now i put it in the Compaq, it recognizes it and i run the windows 2000 setup from the cd.. i set it up, win2000 setup copies the files to the hard drive and then restarts the computer.. well when the computer restarts it sais that NTLDR is missing, press any key to reboot. I made sure in the bios that the hard drive is the first boot device. So what am i doing wrong? Thanks
- Mike

[JBELL]

fat32 is for win9x your need to format to a NTFS file system...

[sjohnson]

I run FAT32 on myWin2k system(s). No problemo.

If NTLDR isn't being found, it might be due the a hidden partition that Compaq uses to hold diagnostic info.

Boot a vanilla DOS diskette and delete all partitions on the drive, then try again.

[Tweaked!]

Actually, I'm working right now on a dell that has 2000 pro on it formatted in fat32. Don't ask me how, and I don't recommend it, ntfs is much better. But have you made sure you removed the floppy boot disk? Other than that, you can go into the bios and make it boot from the cdrom, from there you can reinstall or fix. That should do it for ya.

[sjohnson]

I'll tell you how - FAT32 is a supported filesystem under Win2k - the install CD has a choice for it.

I've no need for ACL's, individual file encryption, the (slight) system overhead or the "waste" of the MFT. I also dual and even triple boot non Win2k/XP O/S's and don't want the aggravation of NTFS with 3rd party apps (ghost works better in FAT32 than it does under NTFS - yes I know the newer versions support NTFS but ghost went downhill once bought out by Symantec, IMO).

[ThePunkerGuy]

Well the HD doesnt have hidden partitions because its my hard drive, not the compaq hard drive. And booting off the cd doesnt help becuse here is what i do.. boot off the cd, run setup, then when setup restarts after copieing files it is suppost to boot from the hard drive and continue setup... but it doesnt.. it says ntldr is missing.
- Mike

[sjohnson]

Then you've got some kind of hardware problem. Cabling, disk bad, disk jumpered wrong, CPU, memory, controller, something!

Compaq's are usually setup as cable select and use their own IDE cables to ensure Primary Master is the boot drive. Try playing with another cable if you have one, and try setting the drive to Master (if cable select) and to cable select (if master). Another issue, the "hidden" partition I mentioned contains Compaq's equivalent to BIOS setup. Do you have any BIOS setup features available to setup the system?

[ThePunkerGuy]

Well, i formated the disk to NTFS and now it works fine. Thanks..
- Mike

[JBELL]

Originally posted by sjohnson
I'll tell you how - FAT32 is a supported filesystem under Win2k - the install CD has a choice for it.

I've no need for ACL's, individual file encryption, the (slight) system overhead or the "waste" of the MFT. I also dual and even triple boot non Win2k/XP O/S's and don't want the aggravation of NTFS with 3rd party apps (ghost works better in FAT32 than it does under NTFS - yes I know the newer versions support NTFS but ghost went downhill once bought out by Symantec, IMO).

on an upgrade that is doable but on clean install I don't believe that is the case.

[sjohnson]

Well, I don't do upgrades lol - so I can tell ya it is doable, easy selection from the menu when asked to format. I like being able to access the disk from a DOS boot, as well.

PunkerGuy - something else must have fixed it, NTFS or FAT32 makes no diff.

Hey guys, no hard feelings, use what makes it work for you, right? :)

[GVCryan]

FYI, google can save us all alot of time.

I ran a search and this came up on the top of the page.
link (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/N/NTLDR.html)

Fixes it fine.