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The picture above depicts NTFS for Windows 98's relationship with NTFS, NTOSKRNL and the Windows 95/98 file system. NTFS for Windows 98 provides an external interface that looks like a standard Windows 95/98 file system, while internally it presents an interface to NTFS that looks like the Windows NT/2000 environment. NTFS for Windows 98 uses a number of services within NTOSKRNL to help implement this environment. Note that NTFS for Windows 98 does not load NTFS or NTOSKRNL unless you have at least one NTFS drive on your system.
NTFS for Windows 98 has been tested to work with the following versions of NTFS:
- NTFS for Windows NT 4.0, SP3 and higher
- NTFS for Windows 2000, Beta 3, RC1, RC2, Final Release
- Windows 95
- Windows 95 OSR2
- Windows 98
- Windows 98 SE
For maximum compatibility in dual boot systems, the recommended partition configuration is to maintain a FAT partition as the first partition on the primary drive. This partition should contain Windows 95/98 and should not be used to store applications or data files. The rest of the primary disks, and any other disks that you wish to share between Windows 98 and Windows NT/2000 can be formatted with NTFS or other file system types (FAT16 or FAT32) that are understood by the operating systems from which you wish to access them. Your Windows NT/2000 system directory can be placed on either a FAT or NTFS drive (note that Windows NT 4.0 cannot be placed on a FAT32 drive, nor boot from a FAT32 drive).
Below is a file system compatibility chart that can help you determine which file systems to use for compatibility in your dual boot environment.
During the NTFS for Windows 98 setup procedure you will be prompted for the location of these files. You may specify either the system directory of a Windows NT/2000 installation (e.g. c:\winnt), or a directory into which you've copied the necessary files. The files that you must make available to NTFS for Windows 98 are:
- NTFS.SYS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys
- NTOSKRNL.EXE: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
- AUTOCHK.EXE: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\autochk.exe
- NTDLL.DLL: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\ntdll.dll
- C_437.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\c_437.nls
- C_1252.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\c_1252.nls
- L_INTL.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\l_intl.nls
The setup procedure allows you to assign drive letters to NTFS drives that NTFS for Windows 98 mounts. Simply enter a string in the drive-letter selection entry that designates, in order, the drive letters for NTFS for Windows 98 to assign. For example, if you want the first NTFS drive mounted to have a drive letter of 'D' and the second to have a drive letter of 'T', you would enter "dt" (without the quotation marks). Note that the entry is case-insensitive. Leaving the entry blank has NTFS for Windows 98 assign the first available drive letter to each mounted NTFS drive.
After the setup procedure is complete you are prompted to reboot your computer. The next time you boot the Windows 95 or 98 system on which you installed NTFS for Windows 98 you will have access to your computer's NTFS volumes. You may rerun the configuration utility at any time to select different drive letters or a different NTFS file.
The NTFS for Windows 98 setup program adds the execution of NTFSCHK to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that the consistency of your NTFS drives is checked every time you boot into Windows 95/98. You may also run NTFSCHK from DOS before Windows 95/98 starts, from a DOS-box command prompt, or by selecting the NTFSCHK icon in the NTFS for Windows 98 program group in the Start menu.
In some cases NTFSCHK will indicate that it cannot lock the specified drive(s). This condition results when applications or Windows has active handles to open files on the NTFS drive for which NTFSCHK reports the condition. If the applications in question do not close their handles, or Windows keeps open handles, you must reboot the computer and run NTFSCHK before the drive is accessed by applications or Windows, or reboot into Windows NT/2000 and perform a chkdsk operation there.
While NTFSCHK scans a drive that drive will not be accessible. If you click on the drive icon in Explorer you will receive an "access denied" error message. If Explorer is opened to directories on a drive being checked and you attempt to navigate the directories you will receive errors indicating that the directories do not exist.
NTFSCHK's command-line usage is as follows (selecting the NTFSCHK program icon results in a check of all the computer's NTFS drives):
ntfschk [/s] [/f] [/q] [ drive letter: | * ]
| /s | This switch has NTFSCHK display the list of detected NTFS drives. Use this command to determine which drive letters correspond to NTFS volumes. | |
| /f | Unless you specify this flag NTFSCHK runs in read-only mode, where it detects and reports errors but does not correct them. Use this flag to fix drives for which NTFSCHK reports corruption. | |
| /q | This switch has NTFSCHK perform a quick check of the specified NTFS drive(s), by not setting the NTFS drive "dirty" flag on the disk(s). Thus, NTFSCHK will only check the drive if it is marked as being in a possibly inconsistent state. | |
| * | Has NTFSCHK check all NTFS drives, or you can specify a specific drive letter (e.g. D:) to check. |
- Version of NTFS
- Version of Windows 95/98
- Number and size of NTFS drives
