NT4 workstation with sp4+

wingzeroismine

Does anyone by any rare chance have a cd updated with sp4 or better? Sp4 fixed support for drives over 8GB. Although there is this patch that you put on a floppy and tell an older NT setup to use it, this is for mainly my mini (which has no floppy, unless someday I ebay a USB one). Since I don't have a floppy drive I can't install NT 4 onto a hard drive partition larger then 8 gigs (which is wanted as it is and will dual boot with 2000)

EDIT: NT 4 can't be slipstreamed, so that's why I'm asking here, otherwise I'd slip it with 6a

TCPMeta

i think if you copy NT4 to the HD and then copy the SP CD to the same directory it will install that SP when you install NT4. Oh that so called driver you were talking about only works for SCSI and a few IDE controllers.

Bash

I think nLite can stripline a SP into an OS, just get nLite and try it, but i donot think it would work with NT4, but it is worth a try.

Anonymous

nLite works for windows 2000 and up, it basically takes all of the various custom install options from different MS made programs and merges them into one gui. You can easily slipstream a service pack into 2000+ without this program, but NT 4.0 can not be slipstreamed. One would have to find a cd that was created with sp4 or higher.

wingzeroismine

uhm...ok..I WAS logged in for that... (it's wingzero if for some odd reason this is also guest.)
I suppose I might be able to just use the patch file if I can get a USB floppy drive. My computer does support boot from USB (I think that means cds and floppies right?). I keep finding ones in stores, but they are like 50 bucks...for such old technology, well I tried to break my ebay addiction and it worked all summer but now looks like school will start and my cash float will drop yet again.

Slash

Is it possible to integrate sp6a in NT4 i386 folder? Like in 2K?

FatTurtle

Slash wrote:

Is it possible to integrate sp6a in NT4 i386 folder? Like in 2K?

You can probally do that. Never tried however.

wingzeroismine

As I said earlier...you CAN NOT integrate an NT service pack and create an updated cd. The process of doing so is called slipstreaming for those who ignored that mentioned fact. NT 4 can not be slipstreamed, so the only way to get an updated setup cd would to have it created by MS themselves.

Correct me if I am wrong.

TCPMeta

I've been told that the SP CDs are drffrent from the binary installer that you can download. I even asked on IRC in the famous #windows95 channel and they said it might work. Just might have to edit some INI and INF files around.

Bash

here is an idea, take the NT4 ISO and open an ISO editing program, make a folder on the ISO called Service Packs, put the SP4 in there. Then when ever you install windows, all you have to do is install SP4 from the CD.

Slash

And is it possible to unpack files from NT4 SP6 , then to pack every single file from there, and replace original NT4 installation files with them.?

BOD

looks like its time for a VPC experiment....

Slash

But it can be... so that might be possible... maybe someone will try that?

BOD

ill have a go tonight..
just gotta find my NT wks disk

wingzeroismine

I'll give it a shot too

well...uh...one has to rename all of the things to .xx_ before placing them into the cd's i386 folder...

it seems that the service pack doesn't contain winnt.exe or winnt32.exe, and I think all the other exe's aren't used during setup so they also get renamed to ex_. Wonder how long it takes to rename them all (I am going to use command promt wildcards).

Slash

Good luck guys... guess it will take VERY long...

wingzeroismine

oh man..I'm not going to do all that renaming.... I give up. You guys know if a USB floppy drive can be used to boot as if it were a regular floppy drive?

stitch

wingzeroismine wrote:

oh man..I'm not going to do all that renaming.... I give up. You guys know if a USB floppy drive can be used to boot as if it were a regular floppy drive?

depends on the bios, most newer bioses can boot from any usb storage device these days.

wingzeroismine

Yeah, I predict that it can boot from a USB floppy drive, as the built in boot menu has an option for USB. I am not entirely sure what usb drives will actually work, I know my (now dead) pen drive didn't boot, but supposedly the secure edition would, I haven't tried booting from a usb hard drive/cd drive/floppy so I guess I'll have to test all of them to see what happens.

Now, this atapi.sys update that allows NT to support larger hard drives, instead of putting it on a different floppy by itself, why not just toss it onto the third setup floppy? I'll try it now and see what I get.

wingzeroismine

ok, that failed....it detected a 7.8 ish gig drive, and only formatted 472 megs....

ok...I've been shot down

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;197667

I thought the updated file would allow it to install to a larger parition. In fact...it is still limited to the 8 ish gigs for the boot partition, but this update enables it to see the rest of the drive and make another partition using all of the drives remaining space (I suppose all of it's leftover space). Well, I suppose I could get used to having a two partition system again.

Also....it automatically sets an 8 gig partition, but it says it's too big to format with FAT (which I figured) and NTFS (which shouldn't be true....)

If you haven't figured it out yet...I just keep editing this post. Well anyways...It detects the full drive, it defaults to making an 8 gig partition, it won't format it because it says the drive is too big. It won't format anything higher then 4 gigs.... I Know for a fact that my mini computer which has NT IS using an 8ish gig drive with ONE partition that is the full size of the drive...so...WTF is wrong? Is this disc too outdated even with the updated file (service pack 1). Or could it just be that this virtual machine is gaying itself (VMware, guess I Should try VPC)

Slash

Damn!!! I thought that will work!!

wingzeroismine

yeah it sucks...I'm not quite sure why it's doing what it is. Does anyone know why it is only letting me format a 4 GB partition? When NT on another computer is using one nearly double?

Slash

because the maximum size of fat16 partition in Windows NT is limited to 4Gb

wingzeroismine

and the maximum size of the NTFS partition I wanted to create is?????

Slash

The problem is that NT 4.0 ALMOST CAN'T CREATE NTFS PARTITIONS! It can only convert Fat to NTFS! And when you choose to format 2Gb partition in NTFS, WindowsNT first formats it into FAT16, and when setup is complete, it converts the partition to NTFS.

wingzeroismine

hrm...so what if I prepared an NTFS partition larger then 4 gigs with something else? Windows 2000 could do it. Does anyone have a good partition manager tool that lets you make NTFS partition?

FatTurtle

wingzeroismine wrote:

hrm...so what if I prepared an NTFS partition larger then 4 gigs with something else? Windows 2000 could do it. Does anyone have a good partition manager tool that lets you make NTFS partition?

Partition Magic. I have the rescuce disks. I always use it. Want them?

Slash

It's better to use Partition Magic. But DO NOT create NTFS partitions to install NT4 there, it will NOT install, cuz PartMagic creates NTFS version from Win2000.

wingzeroismine

then how the hell did NT get installed on my mini computer's 8 gig drive?

Slash

Maybe there was one <4Gb partition.

FatTurtle

wingzeroismine wrote:

then how the hell did NT get installed on my mini computer's 8 gig drive?

Create 2 4 gig FAT12 partitions, convert them to NTFS, and combine them together using partition magic. That's how I would do it.