Windows NT4 Service Pack 4 (or Later) Required for Systems Running Windows 2000/XP/2003

If you have a Windows NT4 NTFS partition which will be accessed (in any way) by a Windows 2000/XP/2003 environment, be sure to upgrade to Windows NT4 Service Pack 4 (SP4) or later before allowing Windows 2000/XP/2003 to access it.  This is necessary because when Windows 2000/XP/2003 accesses an existing Windows NT4 NTFS partition, it updates some of the data structures on it.  Without the updated NTFS driver provided by Windows NT4 SP4 or later, the partition will be inaccessible in the Windows NT4 environment.

If you have allowed Windows 2000/XP/2003 to access a Windows NT4 NTFS partition before installing SP4 or later and are now experiencing blue-screen crashes each time you start Windows NT4, you can correct the problem as follows:

1. Boot into Windows 2000/XP/2003.
2. Copy the file NTFS.SYS from the Windows NT4 SP-4 (or later) CD-ROM to the Windows NT4 directory \WINNT\system32\drivers, replacing the existing file.
3. Boot into Windows NT4.
4. Install Windows NT4 SP4 or later.

Please refer to the following Microsoft support documents for more information:

New Capabilities and Features of the NTFS 3.0 File System (Windows 2000)

New Capabilities and Features of the NTFS 3.1 File System (Windows XP/2003)