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Msg #: 8109 S2/SDK-MSTOOLS Setup
Jul 17 1992 8:54PM
Sb: NT and OS/2 Boot Manager
Fm: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025
To: All
The following is an advanced look at an article which may appear in my column
in the October issue of Windows. Naturally, we still want you to buy the
magazine :-), but it seemed kind of cruel to force you to choose between
waiting for this to appear in print and going thru everything I had to to
figure this out....
Installing NT with OS/2 Boot Manager
by Douglas A. Hamilton
NT can indeed be installed on the same system with DOS, OS/2 1.3 and OS/2 2.0
using OS/2's Boot Manager to choose what system starts up. If you'd like to
do that also, read on. I can save you about 30 hours of groping in the dark.
At the same time, let me also admit that I'm not specifying the "only" way to
make things work, merely the only way I know about. If things go wrong in the
install, it's easy to find yourself staring at a message telling you something
like "DosPathToArcPath reported the following error...", but not so easy to
figure out what to do next. Lots of things seem to interact and it wouldn't
surprise me if there might be lots of "one-off" variations on the rules I'm
about to give that could work also. The point is, I didn't try every
combination -- with roughly an hour per attempt, it just _felt_ like I had.
Point #1: Use the graphical install.
There are two basic strategies for installing NT. One is the so-called
graphical install and the second is a manual method involving copying the NT
distribution tree onto your hard disk, editing the registry.ini file and then
going thru what's referred to as the triple boot sequence where the system is
rebooted three times as it builds all its security structures, etc.
Don't use the manual method unless you positively cannot get the graphical
install to work. Really. The manual method does not give you any way to set
up printers, networks or any automatic way of trimming out drivers and other
fluff you don't need. Since NT is already a big system with a big appetite
for RAM, the last thing you need is a bunch of drivers that don't even go with
[continued in the reply]
There is 1 Reply.
Msg #: 8110 S2/SDK-MSTOOLS Setup
Jul 17 1992 8:55PM
Sb: NT and OS/2 Boot Manager
Fm: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025
To: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025 (X)
[continued from message number 8109]
your hardware being loaded into precious non-pageable memory!
But also, don't use the manual method because the result seems to be
unreliable. I understand and appreciate that the manual method is more or
less what the developers at MS are using on their own machines, so clearly
there must be a way to make it work. But on my machine, I consistently found
that although the installation seemed to go okay and the system seemed to come
up correctly, it was in fact broken. E.g., opening the command window and
typing
set | more
would hang the window. Based on other experiments, it appeared that critical
sections were broken -- as if I had gotten 1/2 a system built with one
variation on the critical section structure and 1/2 built another way.
Everything seemed to work except for critical sections. Unfortunately,
critical sections are, well, sort of critical.
Point #2. Put NT in the first physical partition.
Actually, the release notes tell you this; they're not kidding. My first
attempts were to do as little repartitioning as possible. And why not? The
automatic install for NT that came with PDK2 didn't mind that the first two
physical partitions on my system were the OS/2 Boot Manager and DOS.
The install that comes with the July SDK is more fussy. Trust me: if you
have Boot Manager at the start of the drive, or another (hidden) C: partition
ahead of the one you're trying to install into, it will not work. You can
waste a lot of time or you can just accept that fact and move on.
Point #3. Don't try to install with the OS/2 Boot Manager on there at all.
I found that if Boot Manager is on the drive, even at the end of the physical
volume, install hangs with no warning during the scan it makes of your drives
and you have to reach for the BRS.
The trick to getting NT to work with Boot Manager is to put BM on there
*after* you've already got a successful install done.
Point #4. Don't try to install NT and OS/2 into the same partition.
[continued in the reply]
There is 1 Reply.
Msg #: 8111 S2/SDK-MSTOOLS Setup
Jul 17 1992 8:55PM
Sb: NT and OS/2 Boot Manager
Fm: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025
To: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025 (X)
[continued from message number 8110]
This was really strange I wasted a lot of time installing OS/2 1.3 into a C:
partition, installing NT on top of it and then putting Boot Manager back onto
the drive. I couldn't make it work. For some reason, you get the initial
greeting from NT's Portable Bootloader, but it does not give its usual menu
for selecting NT vs. whatever was previously on that partition. It just tries
to load NT and then fails. Removing BM made it work again, but of course that
defeated the purpose.
If you want to use BM, you can put NT and DOS into the same primary partition
(installing DOS, then NT) but not NT and OS/2 1.3.
Point #5. Don't try formatting the partition with the NT install program.
It does something wierd. My experience was that even when I specified a FAT
format, the partition was not readable at all from OS/2 and even DOS 5 had
problems with it, reporting a garbled partition size.
Format the partition first with DOS or OS/2 if you want it readable by
anything other than NT.
Point #6. Don't try to put NT or even its pagefile onto anything but C:.
Subtle point here: NT always, always, always has to be installed on C: but
you do get options during the install (if you ask for the custom install) to
place all the files that go with it (including the pagefile) on other drives.
If you want to use Boot Manager, don't do that. What happens is that when you
try putting BM on the drive after NT is already installed, all the drive
letters (as seen by the NT Portable Bootloader) will get scrambled again and
Bootloader will complain it can't find ntkrnl.
When you're setting up that initial partition for NT, be sure to make it large
enough (say 50 M or so) to hold all of NT + the pagefile. After you have
*everything* (all the other operating systems and BM) installed, you can move
the pagefile by using regedit. But getting started, everything must be on C:.
Point #7. Don't try installing if you have more than one C: partition.
The OS/2 2.0 FDISK program lets you create multiple primary C: partitions on
[continued in the reply]
There is 1 Reply.
Msg #: 8112 S2/SDK-MSTOOLS Setup
Jul 17 1992 8:55PM
Sb: NT and OS/2 Boot Manager
Fm: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025
To: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025 (X)
[continued from message number 8111]
the same drive, making just one visible at a time. Don't do that until after
NT is already installed.
Point #8. Don't try installing if you have any FAT or unformatted partitions
that come _after_ any HPFS partitions.
This had me in circles for hours. As long as I was repartitioning like crazy
for NT anyway, I decided to do some other cleanup and get rid of several
smaller partitions on which I'd had various beta versions of OS/2 2.0. All of
them were at the end of the extended partition on my 3rd drive. So I
collapsed them into one logical partition but left it unformatted.
What happened was I'd go all the way thru the entire install process setting
up printers, etc. -- I mean, we're talking about an hour to get right to the
bitter end of the install -- and then it'd give me a "non-critical error"
claiming that "External library procedure DosPathToArcPath reported the
following error: Error reading object directory." You get a choice of
whether to continue or simply admit right then and there that you're hosed.
Trust me: you're hosed. What happens is that when you try to reboot NT,
you'll get to the logon screen and it won't recognize your id or password.
It's a secure system -- very secure.
I don't know why, but it did occur to me that the problem might be because
that partition was unformatted so I booted up the OS/2 install disk and tried
formatting. But it's difficult to get OS/2 to do an HPFS format from the
install disk, so I did a FAT format. That produced that same DosPathToArcPath
error.
What finally clued me in was booting DOS and using its FDISK to look at my
partitions. Although DOS seemed to work okay with that partition arrangement,
I noticed FDISK claiming I had two G: partitions, one an HPFS partition which
it could not read and the second, that FAT partition. Going back to the OS/2
install disk and simply deleting the partition (leaving it as free space)
worked.
Bottom line: if you have lots of partitions, be sure that any FAT or
[continued in the reply]
There is 1 Reply.
Msg #: 8113 S2/SDK-MSTOOLS Setup
Jul 17 1992 8:56PM
Sb: NT and OS/2 Boot Manager
Fm: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025
To: Douglas A. Hamilton 70034,2025 (X)
[continued from message number 8112]
unformatted partitions come beforeny HPFS partitions. Otherwise the install
will not work.
Summary: Here's what to do.
1. Repartition as necessary to create a 50M+ primary C: partition for NT (or
DOS + NT) at the very start of your boot drive.
2. Be sure Boot Manager is nowhere on your system, that there are no other
primary partitions on that boot drive and that there are no FAT or unformatted
partitions that come after any HPFS partitions anywhere on your system. We're
talking plain vanilla here. Very important.
3. Format the C: partition with DOS 5 and then install DOS.
4. Install NT using the graphical install, putting *everything* on C:.
5. Boot the OS/2 2.0 install disk and ESC to get to the prompt, from which you
can use FDISK to create partitions for OS/2 1.3, 2.0 and Boot Manager.
6. Install 1.3 and 2.0 in the usual manner.
What you'll get:
When you're all done, you'll have a system that'll have Boot Manager come up
with a menu for choosing NT, 1.3 or 2.0. If you choose NT, you'll then get
the NT Portable Bootloader, giving you a choice between DOS and NT. (Actually
the choice will be between NT and the "previous" OS; you can fix the message
by editing the boot.ini file.)
QED. :-)
Copyright (C) 1992, Windows Magazine, All Rights Reserved.
(Posted here with permission of the editors of Windows Magazine)