Upgrade Installation of Windows NT 4.0 Results In STOP Errors

After you install Windows NT 4.0 as an upgrade over an existing installation of Windows NT 4.0 that had a service pack installed, one or more of the following errors may occur: -or- NOTE: The first argument may change but the STOP code (0x00000050) is the same. This may occur either as an in-place upgrade of Windows NT or as an upgrade of Windows NT Workstation to Windows NT Server.

Windows NT 4.0 was reinstalled as an upgrade over an installation of Windows NT 4.0 that had Service Pack 2 or greater installed and Remote Access Service (RAS) was installed.

For more information on these specific errors and their resolutions, please reference the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: If you are trying to restore the system to a bootable condition and remove Service Pack 2, use the following steps:

1. If the partition is formatted as NTFS, install Windows NT to a different directory so the files on the partition are accessable.
2. If the partition is formatted as FAT, boot to MS-DOS.
3. Change directories to the Service Pack 2 uninstall directory:
   
   (%WinRoot%\$NtServicePackUninstall$)
   
   -or-
   
   ($NTSER~1 or similar name if under DOS)
4. Copy all the *.sys files in the uninstall directory to the %WinRoot%\System32\Drivers of the original Windows NT directory.
5. Copy Win32k.sys from the uninstall directory to%WinRoot%\System32.
6. Copy all other files to %WinRoot%\System32.
7. The system should now be starting correctly. Other errors may be encountered at this point, but the system should start.
8. Start the Service Pack 2 update program but select to uninstall the service pack. This should bring your system back to a PRE-SP2 configuration.
9. If the service pack was not the source of your original problem, Microsoft suggests you re-apply the service pack, but choose NOT to make an uninstall directory in order to preserve your original Windows NT system files already contained in the previous uninstall directory.

Installing Windows NT 4.0 as an upgrade over an installation of the same version is not recommended or supported. If files need to be replaced, boot to MS-DOS if using a partition formatted as FAT and replace the damaged files, or perform a new installation of Windows NT to a different directory so a partition formatted as NTFS can be accessed and then replace the affected files.

An upgrade will attempt to replace files and modify the registry. This may result in mismatched files and/or corruption to the registry that may leave the system unbootable. The in-place upgrade does not replace all service pack files, thus creating an incompatible mix of service pack and non- service pack system files.

This process will NOT work if Service Pack 2 was installed more than once and the uninstall option was selected without first uninstalling the service pack, thus overwriting the uninstall directory. Nor will this work if the uninstall option was not selected during install of the Service Pack. In this case, a parallel install of Windows NT will be needed so a tape backup of the original install can be restored.