I am having lots of problems trying to install Windows 2000 Professional on an old computer I have. When I try to boot from the CD, I get the error message: "CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR". So, I made Boot Disks instead, and tried those. Once I get to the second floppy, however, I get the error message: "The file ftdisk.sys is corrupted". Does anyone have any idea what to do?

Other Useful Info:

Yes, it is a legal copy of Windows 2000 Professional.
Currently, I have Ubuntu installed on the hard drive in this computer.
The hard drive is formatted as EXT3.

Thanks,

This error is caused because Windows doesn't have any support whatsoever for Linux filesystems.
If you were to want to dual-boot Ubuntu and Win2k, you'd have to install Win2k first because it will not install when Ubuntu or any other Linux variation is present.

A simple solution is to hang the HDD with Ubuntu on it off another computer as a slave and use (under XP) Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management to rip all the partitions out.

After removing the Ubuntu partitions, I still get the same error messages.

I thought that maybe the hard drive needed to be formatted, so I tried formatting it, both as FAT32 and NTFS, and I still get the same error messages either way.

Any other ideas?

This may be a hardware issue with the machine depending on its age. Most likely a memory or a hard drive problem but also equally possible it could be a mainboard issue. Memory issues you can leave MemTest86 running a while, hard drive you can download diagnostic tools from the people who's name is on the drive, mainboard issues are almost impossible to diagnose on their own but if you change every other thing for known good working stuff and the same thing happens, then a board problem is the only thing it can be.

I gave up for a while, but I've been back to working on this problem for the past few days and still no luck.

I've tried:

• Installing Ubuntu again (to verify hardware is still in working order).
• Booting from a Windows 98 Startup disk and using the "sys C:" command.
• Running DBAN on the hard drive.

All of these processes were successful, but still no luck with getting the computer to boot from my Windows 2000 install CD. I still get the same error message. Right now I'm sitting with a blank hard drive (just ran DBAN). If anyone has any suggestions on where to go from there, it would be much appreciated.

First, look at the W2K CD and see if \I386\winnt.exe is there. If yes, you can install W2K from your hard drive.

These instructions for XP should also apply to W2K: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...kb;en-us;315349

Once the I386 folder is copied to the hard drive, enter: c:\i386\winnt and press Enter. That will start the normal W2K install process.

Hey thanks, but I've decided to ditch the idea and go with Windows XP. From the looks of it, the CD appears to be scratched a bit, so maybe that's my problem, although my Windows Vista machine recognizes the CD fine when it is inserted. Perhaps just the boot sector was damaged? Oh well. Anyways, I am also having problems with getting XP to install , so maybe you could look here.

Looks like pip 22 is helping you with that one. Good luck.