LT P-600 install problem

[uMP2k]

I am trying to install Win XP on my newly acquired LT P-600.

Having followed the various tips on this forum, I have copied the I386 folder from my CD onto the HDD which I have set up with two FAT 32 partitions one of about 5gb (c: with just the boot disk files) and one of about 3gb (D: with the I386 folder) The rest of the 60gb drive is unpartitioned and, I guess, unformatted. The format, and partiton was all done in an old (very old) IBM thinkpad from a WIN98 boot disk. I did sys c: and then copied over the files from the boot disk so that I could then boot and run winnt.exe on the LT.

Now, I can do this no worries on the Thinkpad. If I remove the boot disk from the floppy and fire up the thinkpad it will boot into dos from the HDD. However, when I put the drive back in the LT it comes up with No system disk. What am I doing wrong? I have tried it with two different cables to the drive in the LT (I have a spare from the LT C-500 I recently dropped!). Basically it will work in the Thinkpad but not in the LT - am I screwed. Is trying to get hold of an LT floppy drive my only option?

[wen-king]

Size can matter when you have BIOS geometry mismatch between your thinkpad and
your LT P-600. 5gb maybe too big. When I have similiar problems, I usually
start with a minimal sized FAT-16 partition as C. It takes only a couple megabytes
to hold the content of a DOS boot floppy. Boot it up on the tablet and use it
to format the rest of the drive on the tablet itself. Then delete the FAT-16
partition and work with the correctly formated large partition from then on.

[uMP2k]

Thanks - i will give it a try!

[uMP2k]

Okay, well I created a FAT12 partition of 7mb (could not create a FAT16 partition with fdisk or one smaller than 7mb)did sys c: and copied the boot disk to it and....

Yes I could now boot from the C: drive with the HDD installed in the Fujitsu. Changed to the other partition (D: drive) and CD to I386 and run winnt so far so good. But, and it is a big but. I am stuck there. XP install reports that I do not have a disk large enough to install windows on (or words to that effect) the partition that I386 is on is the whole remaining disk of over 50gb (formatted to FAT32)so I am not sure what i am doing wrong? Any ideas?

[Northern_Rebel]

Reformat the FAT32 to pain old FAT. Win98 (DOS boot partition) can't see a FAT32 partition.

[uMP2k]

Ahhh - the penny drops!

Thanks I will give it a go an report back.

[wen-king]

Hope the D: was made while the drive is in the tablet. What you need to do is,
in the table, make D: bootable by running "sys d:". Then mark it active and
delete the small partition. There will then be only one partition left on the
drive and there will be no ambiguity which partition XP will install on. You
are in the situation where there is a BIOS geometry mismatch between your tablet
and your laptop. Don't ever use your laptop to create, format, or sys the big
partition. You can, however, use it to write the XP installation files once the
big partition has been created.

[uMP2k]

Thanks for the help folks, but I think am just about to give up on this one!

I think I have tried just about every trick in the book, but no luck.

Wen-king, when I format the rest of my drive on the tablet as you suggest, I end up with a small FAT primary partition and a larger extended partition. However, If I delete the primary then I am only left with the extened partition which I cannot boot from.

I am going to leave it for a bit (should be working at the moment!) and get back to it tonight. I will try to follow your instructions from elsewhere in the forum to the letter and see how I go. BTW I did download a copy of sfdisk but it would not run on the tablet (would on the thinkpad) reporting not enough memory. Maybe I need a different version.

Another Idea I might try is to install Win98 and then copy over the i386 directory and run winnt from a command prompt - any ideas if that will work?

Thanks once again for the responses.

[wen-king]

OK, I forgot to tell you that even though you can have 4 primary
partitions on a hard drive, some partition tools only let you make
one. That is one reason I use sfdisk. I think you ran out of memory
because you forgot to enable himem when DOS start up. A boot floppy is
only 1.44 Mbyte, and the program itself has to fit on a boot floppy. I
can't imagine it to have a memory usage that is 2 orders of magnitude
larger.

[uMP2k]

Just a quick note of thank you!

I got sfdisk running, followed the instructions and Bobs your uncle - here I am with TabletPC edition up and running on my LT-P600!