From: jvert@microsoft.com (John Vert)
Subject: Re: OS/2 Boot Manager and NT incompatibility; Read on! 
Date: 16 Dec 92 03:50:49 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation

In article <1992Dec15.124936.18461@ugle.unit.no> amund@itk.unit.no (Amund Skavhaug) writes:
>In article <1992Dec14.192226.16205@microsoft.com>, jvert@microsoft.com (John Vert) writes:
>|> 
>|> [ giant anti-MS polemic deleted ]
>|> 
>|> The reason that the NT Beta will not install with Boot Manager is NOT
>|> because Microsoft hates IBM, or because Microsoft wants to make your life
>|> miserable, or any other shadowy Microsoft conspiracy.  The reason is
>|> that Boot Manager plays games with the partition table.  Notably, the
>|> partition that NTLDR gets started from is no longer marked ACTIVE.  
>|> Instead, the Boot Manager partition is marked ACTIVE.  Whether or not
>|> you think IBM has broken the "rules" of the MBR and partition table,
>|> the fact is that without a lot of amazing gymnastics (like Doug Hamilton
>|> has outlined elsewhere) you cannot get Boot Manager and NTLDR to agree 
>|> on what partition should be marked ACTIVE.
>|> 
>|> Since installation of NT over Boot Manager will likely result in either
>|> an unbootable NT or an unbootable OS/2, Windows NT Setup does its best
>|> to prevent this.  You may consider this "sneaky" or "underhanded" if
>|> you like.  But the truth is that this configuration is not supported
>|> for a REASON that has nothing to do with marketing.
>|>      jvert@microsoft.com  (speaking, of course, for myself)
>|> 
>
>-- This is not true.
>I made a primary dospartition active, then tried to install the october
>NT beta (on floppies). On the first diskette NT hung, disk drive on,
>had to switch off the power. So ... NT does not check for an active
>bootmanager partition, it checks if it is there at all !
>Then I took a brand new IDE disk, removed the old with both dos and
>os2 on. Installed NT on a partition first on it. At NT boot time it
>asked me if I wanted to boot NT or previous operating system...
>there WAS NO previous operating system on the disk, I low level formatted it
>before I started !
>Then afterwards I installed bootmanager , installed the dos/os2 disk as a
>slave disk. Booting os2 or dos from bootmanager was ok. Then I tried
>NT from the bootmanager menu, it starts, then it looks for NTLDR and
>dies. And I came up with the same conclusion as jvert@microsoft.com...
>BUT then I booted dos, used norton utilities, changed bootmanagers
>partitiontable id from 0A to 00.(Use diskedit.exe, it its EASY)
> NB Still bootmanager was active !
>Then I booted NT from the bootmanager menu, no problem at all !
>What does this mean ? It is easy to make NT coexist with os2, and
>jvert@microsoft.com is either misinformed, a lier, or MS has got
>some really incompetent programmers (and these has told jvert).
>
>This is NOT `advocacy`, but information about how to try NT and os2
>on the same machine easily....And watch NT eating up 16MB ram,
>30MB swapfile before any programs are started :-)
>
>Regards, Amund Skavhaug
>
>Division of Engineering Cybernetics	: Phone +47 7 594376
>The Norwegian Institute of Technology	: Fax   +47 7 594399
>N-7034 Trondheim                        : Email amund@itk.unit.no
>NORWAY
>

Actually, what it REALLY means is that you have marked the active partition
as UNUSED by setting its ID to 0.  NTLDR skips unused partitions, so it
does not find an active partition at all.  If it does not find an active
partition, it defaults to the first recognized partition, which actually
might turn out to be the right one.  (It might NOT be the right one, but
it's a pretty good guess)

You may, of course, still consider me a liar, misinformed, and incompetent.
Direct those followups to alt.flame, which appears to be where Amund
developed his amazingly professional demeanor.  Also, please do not feel
obligated to send me personal mail informing me what an incompetent
fool I am, I have plenty of that left over from my last post..

     jvert@microsoft.com.  (speaking for myself, of course)

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc