#NT Tips
I've been hammering away at NT to determine what some worse case
scenarios are and doing the kinds of things that the docs never
anticipate anyone doing and I thought I'd pass along a few tips.
What if you decide you want to run NT without Windows installed?
Well many applications run fine but a few don't. Its interesting to
see which one's don't and why but that could get rather lengthy so
I'll just put it out there that should you decide not to run Windows
under NT expect some unexpected results. For instance even though an
app may be Win32s some developers have chosen to not let their apps
run under NT for no other reason than to charge more for the
privilege. In some cases it has to do with drivers as in the case of
ER's Abekas driver, which is understandable.
Another thing, should you decide to delete WinNT for some reason,
there are a bunch of related files like ntldr that won't let the
system boot. No problem all you need to do is run a DOS boot off a
floppy and run SYS on your hard drive and the new IO.SYS etc. will
allow you to boot as usual.
This is provided that you are still using FAT directory structures.
If you've modified your system to fully support NT, you'll have to
reformat your drive unless you plan to re-install it, in which case
boot up cold from the floppy should start the process in the same
fashion as when you loaded it in the first place.
One other tip, is that should you install NT over DOS and then
decided to modify you BOOT.INI file so that you can access DOS
directly, the help menu doesn't tell you that you need the
BOOTSECT.DOS file installed on the hard drive as well. (minor
detail… <g>) It is a simple 512k file which you can store should
you only have one system and has no special attributes like a system
file. Make a copy and save yourself some frustration in the event
that you decide to clean up your system. It just has to be there like
a driver.
Hope this helps keep the NT experience a smooth one… 🙂