Knowledge Base

Windows NT 3.51 Step Up Installation

Article ID: 132545

Article Last Modified on 11/1/2006

APPLIES TO

This article was previously published under Q132545

SUMMARY

The Special Step-Up Edition of Windows NT 3.51 can be used to upgrade from Windows NT 3.5 to Windows NT 3.51. The Special Step-Up Edition runs only on computers with Windows NT 3.5 or Windows NT 3.51 installed. If Windows NT 3.5 or 3.51 in installed on a computer, you can use the Special Step-Up Edition to upgrade that copy to Windows NT 3.51, or install Windows NT 3.51 into a new directory. The Special Step-Up Edition cannot be used to upgrade or install over Windows NT 3.1.

NOTE: The Windows NT repair procedure also uses these steps to detect a Windows NT installation to repair. If NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTDLL.DLL are corrupted, the repair process may fail reporting it cannot locate a Windows NT installation. It is possible to expand and copy NTOSKRNL.EXE and NTDLL.DLL to the %SystemRoot%\System32 directory to allow the repair procedure to continue.

MORE INFORMATION

The Special Step-Up Edition setup program checks the following to verify that an upgradable copy of Windows NT 3.5 is installed on the computer:
  1. The BOOT.INI file is searched for entries indicating installations of Windows NT.
  2. Setup checks for the following files and directories in the location specified by the BOOT.INI entry:
     
   Directories:

      \SYSTEM32
      \SYSTEM32\DRIVERS
      \SYSTEM32\CONFIG

   Files:

      \SYSTEM32\NTOSKRNL.EXE
      \SYSTEM32\NTDLL.DLL
  3. Setup loads the SYSTEM and SOFTWARE hives from the registry and verifies the product type and version. The following items are verified in the registry:

    1. The installed version must be 3.5 or higher, but not higher than the version you are attempting to install.
    2. The installed version product type is compared against the Step-Up product type. You cannot use the Special Step-Up Edition of Windows NT Workstation to upgrade a Windows NT Server installation, and vice versa.
If all of these things check out correctly, Setup proceeds. If any of the elements listed above are missing, the Setup does not to proceed. Also, if anything prevents Setup from seeing the Windows NT 3.5 installation, Setup does not proceed. For example, mirrored drives, inaccessible drives, and other similar problems can prevent Setup from seeing a Windows NT 3.5 installation.

Windows NT 3.5 and Windows NT 3.51 Setup use the same steps listed above when looking for previous installations of Windows NT. The only difference is, the Special Step-Up Edition setup program requires the presence of an upgradable copy of Windows NT 3.5.

Additional query words: 3.51 prodnt advanced server ntas

Keywords: KB132545


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