>>>anyone know if windows 2000 professional can read ntfs?
>>
>>Yes. However, there are problems with NT4 reading an NTFS partititon once Win2K has handled it directly - IOW, you can't dual-boot NT4 and Win2K successfully.
>
>I dont like the sound of that... What if I try to install Win2K Pro on my notebook and have troubles like I did when I first installed NT4, and then chicken out like I'm prone to do with hardware/os conflicts and wish to go back to NT4 for awhile? Am I going to be screwed in this (albeit worst case) scenario?
>

Make a backup before trying, because if things get frobbed and you have to roll back, NT may puke on the results of what Win2K did to a system partition in particular. Note especially that NT can't be guarenteed to boot from a system partition of >4GB, and will puke on one >7.8GB even with drivers that can support big volumes. There's lots on this in the NTFAQ site in my sig. Win2K can make and boot big NTFS partitions andthe server versions support some fault tolerance boot configs that NT can't.

>And while I'm on the subject of working up the nerve here to venture into OS install hell, is there a new HCL for Win2K? My toshiba notebook & all it's parts were listed on the NT4 HCL and yet I still had major headaches...

Do it. Just ask Koziol. Oh John, do Toshiba laptops like Win2K Pro?

(He's running one with 96MB and Pro and happier than a clam at last report. And he uses it; it's not just for show and tell.)