How to boot from HD, FAT 32

[Imran Aziz]

I have bought an old computer (not too old, p3, 500 MHZ celeron) and I'm trying to isntall windows 2000 in it. It's HD is 6GB.

First I tried to install DOS on it and only way was to have it formatted fat16 so I could boot. Fat 16 can't see more than 2GB, so I created 3 partitions. Installed 95. Worked. But.....all drivers are at the minimum available for win98 . And the only OS I have is Win2k / XP.

Win2k neeeds at least FAT 32 or NTFS. So I partitioned it again. This time FAT32.

Problem...can't boot from HD. I can boot from floppy, or a bootable CD. HD is fine, now errors. I then ran Win2k installation but when installation demands reboot after initial phase, same problem...can't boot from HD. To install any thing, XP, 95 or win2k, I need it to boot from HD first.

Sys C: from floppy doesn't work.
Copying command.com, io.sys on HD manually and then setting their attributes, didn't work
Tried installing 95 again, didn't work

It is 6GB empty HD, and now I'm copying i386 folder for win2k. But still, need to be bootable from HD. I have dos622, copied all of it on HD, still didn't work.

Stupid computers. Any suggestions?

 

[Cromewell]

check in the BIOS to make sure that the HD is in the boot order

 

[Imran Aziz]

check in the BIOS to make sure that the HD is in the boot order

Thanks! It's in BIO boot order and it looks for it and said 'Invalid system disk'

I'm formatting it again and then booting from floppy and doing 95 on it.

This time, it'll be on FAT32 at least!

Win2000 works on FAT32. That's what I'll try.

Then using Win2k windows tools I'll make NTFS partitions and do Win2k on one of those partitions.

Then i'll delete FAT partition.

One day i'll be able to run XP on it

 

[Praetor]

First I tried to install DOS on it and only way was to have it formatted fat16 so I could boot

Should be able to format to fat32 in dos....

Win2k neeeds at least FAT 32 or NTFS. So I partitioned it again. This time FAT32.

When you install W2K it gives you the option of partitioning and formating....

Sounds like you need to either boot off the CD or floppy with CD drivers