NT 4.0 Newbie!

[FantasyAcquiesce]

Hello! After being dissatisfied with Windows 9x on my Dell Latitude D600 (I love Windows 9x, but its instability bugs me >.<) I'm hoping to try NT 4.0 instead. The drivers were a billion times easier to find for NT 4.0 than Windows 98SE/ME

So far I'm at the formatting part. I'm wondering if there's any way I could get NT 4.0 to go beyond a "8gb" partition. When I tried to make a partition that's 8000MB, NT forced it to be 8001MB and refuses to let me install on that partition because its "too large".

Edited October 30, 2016 by ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~

[jaclaz]

Yes/No.

Be VERY aware of the possible issues with NTFS version in case you are dual booting with (or however accessing the disk through) a newer NT OS, such as 2K or XP:
 

Also (only seemingly unrelated):
 

jaclaz
 

[pointertovoid]

13 hours ago, ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ said:

I'm wondering if there's any way I could get NT 4.0 to go beyond a "8gb" partition.

I hoped Jaclaz would answer that more clearly. I don't have a long experience with Nt4. Everything I've read up to now tells "NO".

That is, the system volume is limited to 8GB. Not only because the install disk formats this volume as Fat16 first, but also because the installed Nt4 SP0 can't access much more - possibly because it accesses disks via the CHS rather than LBA (?). Once Nt4 has received one service pack (N°4?) it can access the disk to 128GiB (?) so you can define volume(s) beyond 8GB
but
when you repair Nt4 with the install Cd it regresses to SP0 since the SP can't officially be slipstreamed in the install Cd
so
your Windows must constantly be able to operate and get updates without the help of the other volumes.

I've read about tricks to
- Slipstream updates, including SP6a and SR2 in the install Cd
- Provide SP4's Atapi.sys to Nt4sp0, disguised as a host driver on an F6 diskette, to access the full disk
but I didn't investigate since i would probably take months.

[jaclaz]

Well, jaclaz thinks that the thing the OP is wandering about is not that much "original", and related info (if interested) can be found with very little difficulties, you know, like looking for them.

Namely:
http://windowsitpro.com/windows/how-do-i-install-disk-larger-8gb

The basic issue revolves around the Int13 extension AND there is also a limitation in the NTLDR, so you will need to use a 2K or XP one (coupled with the corresponding NTDETECT.COM), but - as a matter of fact - it is a non-problem, or - if you prefer - we are talking of solutions in search of problems.

Ok, this is not-so-trivial to find :

https://web.archive.org/web/20121017215600/http://nu2.nu/fixnt4/

 

Still, a normal install of a FULL NT 4.0 is around 200 Mb.

It is STRONGLY advised (by me, but I simply follow the advice by Gilles Vollant and the actual way NT 4.0 was designed) to install the Operating System in a Logical Volume inside Extended and have a small primary partition for just the boot files (and/or DOS/Win9x).

In the real world, you won't EVER *need* the OS volume to be bigger than (say) 2 Gb or so, 8 Gb is much, much more than enough for any possible use of NT 4.0 (of course you keep your collection of DVD's and more generally data on a data volume),  here is a complete guide, including the use of the UNIATA driver, that will allow to have also larger than 128/137 Gb/Gib disks accessible:
http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm

jaclaz

 

Edited October 31, 2016 by jaclaz

[Dibya]

I will ask my granny to join this forum . hope she will many people .

She still now use nt 4.0 for her day to day work.