Problem installing Windows 2000

[Galaxy_EGS]

Hi everyone,

This is a very strange situation to me, can anyone give me a clue?

I bought a new computer for my wife, following are the specs:

PCCHIPS P4 FSB800 motherboard
Intel Pentium 4, 2.4 microprocessor
Win XP, SP 2
LG CD-ReWriter
256 RAM
Seagate 80-Gb HD

My wife has a very bad experience with XP so she asked me to install Windows 2000. I tried to boot with a Win 2K CD. I get the usual screen saying the installation files are being loaded, but suddenly, I get a message saying the system couldn't find some information and asks me to load a CD with NT, Win 95, or Win 98.

I tried booting from my Win 2K diskettes. Same problem. I deleted the partition, and repeated the procedure;no success.

At this point, I thought I had spoiled the HD. I bought a new, identical HD. I followed the procedure for a new install, same results, I get to the point where I'm asked to load an NT, Win 95, or Win 98 CD, . I decided to try an XP install just to see what would happen. Voila, everything went fine, so I installed XP on the new HD. First thought: the mother board might not be Win 2K compatible, I look into the manual: I should be able to install Win 2K, . I decided to try an XP install just to see what would happen; voila, everything went fine, so I installed XP. I placed the HD on my own PC which runs Win 2K and XP on separate partitions of a Seagate 40-GB HD. My motherboard is Intel D865GLC with an Intel Pentium 4, 3 GHz microprocessor.

Same results, . I formatted the HD with a primary NTFS partition, then started. Same results.

For what I have search, I know I can't install Win 2k on a RAID 5 HD, but I can't see these HDs are RAID 5, are they?

Any ideas?

Thanks

[elroy]

Sounds like you have a Win2k upgrade cd. When it starts to install it will ask you to remove your Win2k cd and insert a 95, 98 or ME cd to verify that you are eligible for the upgrade. You'll need one of those cd's to make it install.

[Galaxy_EGS]

This didn't happen when I first installed it on my HD which was also new. Interesting though confusing!!

I got a boot diskette with ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini, but I get a message saying I need ntoskernel.exe. I found it in system32 but it won't fit the bootable diskette. I'm going to make a bootable CD and include ntoskernel, then I'll see what happens. I'll let you know.

[roley]

Windows XP Pro SP2 is a very good OS...much better than Windows 2000 Pro in several ways: driver support, security and features.

I would advise you to keep win xp sp2, but switch to windows classic theme and go into my computer properties and advanced and switch to best performance rather than best appearance...that will make it feel more like win 2000, but all the strength of win xp will be working in background.

Windows 2000 is definitely a weaker system and does not work well with many non ide disk controller technologies.

Roley