Installing 2k in place of XP; warning messages

[videobruce]

I want to install 2k in place of XP Pro on the 1st partition of a HDD. When doing so, I get warning messages regarding the disk being new, erased or a incompatable O/S already there.

I didn't go further since the 2nd partition has valuable data on it and I didn't want to take a chance. I'm doing this to troubleshoot a serial port issue with XP and have already imaged the 1st partition. The 2nd partition is very large and I don't have a place to put it.
I have run Chk. Disc with no errors on both partitions.

I also have a 2nd HDD, but I disconnected that durning this process. Could that have some effect?

Ideas?

[vickershaft]

I'm not sure if disconnecting the second HDD would affect it but I don't think it should if its a slave, infact it should have no baring whatsoever and your second partition should be safe as it acts like a second HDD on your main HDD. Have you thought of using the second HDD for the 2k installation you should then be able to switch between the two pretty easily or you could even think about snatch drive's if your prepared to spend a little cash on them.

[Erik]

The second drive which is disconnected will have no impact on a new install. As far as the new install is concerned you never had a second drive and never will (until one is connected).

What is most likely happening is Windows 2000 does a detection looking for existing Windows installs (for upgrade or repair install purposes) and discovers Windows XP. Since XP is a newer OS the 2000 installer knows nothing about it, and just sees it as an existing install. As long as you have a way of knowing for sure which partition is the OS and which is data (such as size) it should be safe to just format the XP partition and install 2000.

However I don't see how this has anything to do with a serial port. Serial ports are still available and work fine in XP.

[mjc]

Also, you can get that type of 'error' if the partition you are wanting to install 2k on is NFTS, formatted by XP. XP's version of NTFS is newer than 2k's so 2k doesn't know what to do with it...

But, Erik is pretty much spot on...

[videobruce]

I'm not sure if disconnecting the second HDD would affect it but I don't think it should if its a slave,I have a 2nd copy of XP on my 2nd HDD. That's the way I have set my boxes up for some time now. Two drives, both partitioned.Have you thought of using the second HDD for the 2k installationThis is what I'm trying to do.The serial port issue centers around trying 2k which is what I'm trying to do. Disconnecting the 2nd HDD prevents any data corruption between the two bootable drives. I have had it happen in the past.

[Paul Komski]

I would never mess around with new installations or repartitioning or reformatting if I had un-backed-up "valuable data" in any system regardless of how many drives or partitions could be accessed.

As well as the different versions of NTFS, WinXP and Win2K can also poll the same hard drives attached to the same mobo and come up with opposite enumerations.

If you are sure about what you are doing you can delete the offending WinXP partition before you start with utilities like BootIt-NG or GParted and then install into a new partition that you create and format in the unallocated space during Win2K setup. Personally I would only do this to a single HDD attached at the time and have my data backed up safe. I would also temporarily "hide" the important partition until I was finished with the install.

[videobruce]

Elsewhere it was reported that 2k used V3, while XP uses V3.1 of NTFS.

More important, the drive is 320GB and I never thought/forgot about the 137GB limit of 2k.
I am now writting zero's to the drive and will start from scratch.

[Paul Komski]

SP4, if slipstreamed, should overcome the 137 gig barrier from the OS's standpoint. One can often get away with an install into a small enough partition under 137 gig if its at the start of the hard drive with all versions of Win2K.