SmartDrive OWNS !

Renton

Anyone remember "smartdrv.exe" ,

Check this out! :

Installing Win2k
WITHOUT Smartdrv = Anywhere up to 1 hr +
WITH Smartdrv = Got the initial setup phase done in less than 2 minits. (usually takes about half an hour)

Anyone use this much ?

Does it affect instalations of Win98 aswell, ??

RentZ

Gerry

Very interesting, I would have thought the win2k setup program would have an nt base, and that a dos driver like smartdrv wouldn't make any difference. Can you detail exactly how you got this to work?

Renton

Basically:

I copied the contents of the i386 folder onto the Harddrive ... and then ran "winnt.exe" it told me to get Smartdrive, but i can continue without it alright, so I did, it took ages, so then when after it failed on the first time ... I then decided on my second attempt to get this smartdrv.exe from the C:\windows folder from a 98 machine.. You must have himem.sys running in order to run it,

So basically:
device=himem.sys
Smartdrv.exe
winnt.exe

And ur laffing

RentZ

amp

Or you could just boot up from cd where I presume it's (or it's equivilant) is loaded.

---

Lunacy Abounds! GLminesweeper RO><ORS!
art is everything and of course nothing and possibly also a sausage

Renton

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by amp:
Or you could just boot up from cd where I presume it's (or it's equivilant) is loaded.

</font>

Altho im not sure if you're right or wrong on that, I dont belive that it does actually load up on the Win2k Boot image

RentZ

SickBoy

If you boot from the CD as Amp and Gerry said the NT equivilant gets loaded. What your suggesting is installing Win2k from the DOS enviroment(unless your CDROM drive isn't bootable, why, OH why!!)

flamegrill

I found the fastest way to get the initial install of Windows 2000 professional, was to do it in windows. It copies everything u need to the hard disk and then reboots your box. Takes about a minute if you are at all lucky. From there everything is nice and smooth and there is no delay.

flame

Gerry

That requires having windows 9x installed, which is an utter waste of time anyway.

Renton

Agreed

RentZ

flamegrill

everyone to there own

and gerry about 2000 install having an NT base, well from what I understand the inital setup for NT and 2000 has always been a DOS based one. Its just a basic file copy and boot record setup.

flame

[This message has been edited by flamegrill (edited 25-05-2001).]

SickBoy

Flamegrill: that maybe true of NT as if you want to create an NTFS partition in setup it creates it as FAT and after it reboots it then converts it to NTFS but 2000 is not the same it supports NTFS straight away and this leads me to believe that its not DOS based.

JustHalf

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by SickBoy:
Flamegrill: that maybe true of NT as if you want to create an NTFS partition in setup it creates it as FAT and after it reboots it then converts it to NTFS but 2000 is not the same it supports NTFS straight away and this leads me to believe that its not DOS based.</font>

That's one LONG sentence.

SickBoy

Appologies

Renton

The initial set up phase of Win2k is Dos based, (if you run winnt.exe) ..

But again, who is to say that smartdrv doesnt work in NTFS ?

(probably everyone, i dunno i havent checked )

BTW on another note, I did this:

I copied the win98 SE cabs from the cd to a bootable harddrive (into c:\win98)

I then made that hard drive load himem.sys and smartdrv.exe on startup...

Mucho faster installation

RentZ

SickBoy

Renton, if you are running winnt.exe to begin the installation of w2k then obviously you'll be in a dos environment. If you were installing/upgrading from 9x then you would be running winnt32.exe. I'm almost 100% sure if you boot from the CD you're not in a 16bit dos environment.

flamegrill

Sickboy im inclined to agree

Renton

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by SickBoy:
Renton, if you are running winnt.exe to begin the installation of w2k then obviously you'll be in a dos environment. If you were installing/upgrading from 9x then you would be running winnt32.exe. I'm almost 100% sure if you boot from the CD you're not in a 16bit dos environment.</font>

Yes I agree with ya there, BUT if you boot off the cd how are you magically gonna stop the install, and run smartdrv, and who cares anyways ! im talking about dos based starts i.e. ---> winnt.exe <---

hehe

RentZ

Renton

OH YEAH and before I foget, im the only original character from Trainspotting around here, I suggest m'auld m8y that you get a new name

RentZ

(btw ltns m8 hows tricks)

Stephen

Sickboy's been around here a lot longer than you renton

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Renton:
Yes I agree with ya there, BUT if you boot off the cd how are you magically gonna stop the install, and run smartdrv</font>

Master of the Obvious to the rescue!!

NT has it's own version of smartdrv which it will load because it's booted off the CD (which is NT OS). Where as you booted off DOS disks which don't by default load SmartDrv.

This is why without smartdrv it takes forever to copy the files to your system, but when it finally copies them and reboots into NT OS loader it is no longer slow.