Performing an attended installation of Windows 2000 Server

Final Words and Setup Tips

Congratulations! You have completed an attended clean-install of Windows 2000 server. Now that you have mastered the clean-install, setting up a machine for dual-booting or upgrading will be a snap, because you will be asked the exact same questions that were asked during the clean-install. The only difference will be starting Setup and configuring another partition if you are dual-booting. To start setup for dual-boot or an upgrade, click on Start, Run, and type x:\i386\winnt32. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of Windows NT 4.0 Server, so I will not be able to demonstrate how to upgrade, but I am considering doing another guide on dual-booting. Also, if you are in a corporate environment, you would most likely be installing Windows 2000 Server as a domain controller. I will probably do another guide for that as well. For now, I hope you enjoyed reading my first technical guide on Windows 2000!

Tips for a Successful Installation

• If you are starting Setup after booting from an older Windows version's bootdisk, make sure to run smartdrv.exe to speed up the file-copy process. SmartDrive is the disk caching program for DOS that is also included with Windows 9x.
• If you are performing an upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 Server in a mission-critical environment, make sure you back up important files in case the upgrade goes awry.

No hard drives found

• If you see the above screen during textmode setup, follow these steps to correct the problem:

1. Restart Windows 2000 Server Setup, and pay close attention to the status bar as Setup loads. You will see a message that says "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver" (as shown below). Hit F6 when you see this message.
2. When the "Specify Additional Device" screen appears, press S to specify a driver.
3. The "Insert Disk" screen appears. Insert the floppy disk on which your hard drive controller's drivers are located, and hit enter.
4. Setup will then ask you to choose the correct driver from a list. Choose your driver and hit enter.
5. You will then be taken back to the "Specify Additional Device" screen, but this time Setup notifies you that it will load drivers for your device. If necessary, you can also load additional drivers.
6. Continue installing from Page 3 of this guide.

After driver has been loaded, insert driver disk and press enter