Installing Windows 2000 RC2

I'm having a problem installing Microsoft Windows 2000 RC2. After booting from CD-ROM for setup, it runs normally like Windows NT. It lets me get as far as the "Starting Windows 2000" portion of the install. But then my screen goes blank, no text. It hangs from there onward. I did wait for more than half an hour. But it doesn't work. I'm running an Intel Celeron 400 with 64M bytes RAM. I just can't see what's wrong with it. The only thing I suspect is my dual boot system. I'm currently running dual boot with Windows 98/NT and Linux.

Lily

Since your system is booting from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM, this would indicate that it supports the El Torito CD format necessary for booting from a CD-ROM. Take a quick inventory of the hardware in your system and consult the Windows 2000 Hardware Compatibility List on Microsoft's Web site.

If the motherboard and video card aren't on the list, that could be the problem. Windows 2000 is a little particular as to the hardware it will work with. Another option is to check with technical support at the companies that make the motherboard and video card to see if they have additional drivers necessary for operation under Windows 2000 or know of any tricks to get the products to work with Windows 2000.

You may want think about purchasing a copy of Partition Magic 4.0 if you want to consider dual booting. There has been at least one warning from Microsoft about trying to dual boot Windows 98 with Windows 2000 due to some identical directory names and file names between the two operating systems. This is where Partition Magic and similar programs come to the rescue. They let you dynamically repartition the drive and handle an almost unlimited number of partitions on the drive. This can save you a lot of time in reformatting the drive when you want to change what operating systems are on it or want to make changes in the size of partitions without reformatting the drive and starting over.

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