From: amund@itk.unit.no (Amund Skavhaug)
Subject: Re: OS/2 Boot Manager and NT incompatibility; Read on! 
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology / SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 12:15:21 GMT


-- In article <1992Dec16.035049.11528@microsoft.com>, jvert@microsoft.com (John Vert) writes:
|> 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)
|> 

I KNOW setting it to 0 means unused, and I am glad you told us the reason
why it works then.(As I said before, my first thougt was , after your information
the correct one, it looks for NTLDR in the active partition). But it does not
explain why it hung when a primary dospartition was active (NOT the bootmanager),
it could have been a bug (hanging is definitly a bug by the way), and thats
OK, it is after all kind of beta version.

My point is (I beleve you are working on this ?), you COULD make it coexist (?),
and your post about being the active partition was not the complete story, and
not absolutely correct, since it surely IS possibly to make it work.

By the way , I did not intend neither `advocacy` nor `flames`.
If you, or any other read my post as any kind of insult to you
personally, I apology to you here in public. (I was sure you did not
lie to us intentionally, or that you or your friends are not incompetent,
rather I beleved (as you have confirmed) that your post was not the complete
story, and therefore sligthly misleading. This little difference was lost
in my lack of your language, sorry.)

Any further replys to this is waste of bandwith, I have used to much already.


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

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc