I was developing sharepoint app in windows 2003 and was testing windows 2008 sharepoint. When I initially installed windows 2008 first on a test pc and tried to make it a dual boot pc with 2003 however; 2003 will not even see the drive or the partitions I had created to install it on the second partition. Now I cannot install windows 2003 on the harddrive because 2008 will not allow the harddrive to be seen by any other system except itself. I booted to win 2008 and unpartitioned the drive and made it unallocated to see if I could get the drive viewable by win 2003 but it still will not find the drive. What tool is needed to reformat the drive to its original condition if the workstation does not have low level format? I think I should have done this the other way around and installed windows 2003 first and then added 2008 later. Will Virtual server help in this case?

Yes, I'd always install older OS version as the first step. The newer OS preserves backward compatibility for starting earlier Windows versions. Also always install OSs on separate partitions.When you boot from the 2003 installation media and if your drive controller *F6* very early and very important (at setup is inspecting your system) in the setup to prevent drive controller detection, and select S to specify additional drivers. Then later you'll be prompted to insert the manufacturer supplied Windows 2003 driver for your drive controller in drive "A")-- Regards,Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.Microsoft Certified ProfessionalMicrosoft MVP [Windows]http://www.microsoft.com/protect"WorkerBee09" wrote:I was developing sharepoint app in windows 2003 and was testing windows 2008 sharepoint. When I initially installed windows 2008 first on a test pc and tried to make it a dual boot pc with 2003 however; 2003 will not even see the drive or the partitions I had created to install it on the second partition. Now I cannot install windows 2003 on the harddrive because 2008 will not allow the harddrive to be seen by any other system except itself.e it unallocated to see if I could get the drive viewable by win 2003 but it still will not find the drive.What tool is needed to reformat the drive to its original condition if the workstation does not have low level format?I think I should have done this the other way around and installed windows 2003 first and then added 2008 later. Will Virtual server help in this case?

Hi, I dont think the issue is related to Windows Server 2008 you have installed, I installed Windows Server 2003 on a Windows Server 2008 computer several times. It seems that you cant find the hard drive during the installation. If so, you may encountered the issue with SATA hard disk. In Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP installation disk, there are no drivers for SATA hard disk(some OEM like Dell integrate SATA and RAID drivers to the installation disk themselves) If you want to install Windows Server 2003 on a SATA hard disk, you can perform the following suggestions: 1. Use a installation disk has SATA drivers integrated. 2. Copy the SATA driver to s floppy disk, press F6 to load the driver. 3. Navigate to BIOS, set the hard drive to IDE model or compatibility mode. In addition, we have a post discussed the similar issue, you can refer to: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/7e58be1f-3e97-44cf-ae11-de2627d9cd94/ Best Regards, Vincent Hu