Goofed on clean install

[Sunny]

Yesterday I had a perfectly good Windows ME.
PC has 2 hard drives and had/has Partition Magic 8.01 dividing them up into
2 x 40Gb each.
Using PM8 and Boot Magic I halved the "C" drive and installed Win XP Home.
I goofed during the install by "pressing any key" and the copying of files
occurred twice.
After that the PC booted into WinXP (not boot magic) and, I am in the
process of re-installing the zillions of applications.

I had to change drive letters for CDROM and CDRW, but WINXP still recognizes
the hard drives as partitioned and I can access all partitions but the
original "C" with WinME (hidden).
The original "C" partition of 20 Gb with ME seems to be still there, but?
After I get WinXP running, I thought that I might install PM8.01 and Boot
Magic to see what happens?
Just stumbling through all this, and any advice would be greatly
appreciated.

When the PC boots now I get a screen with (among other things):
"Windows XP Home Edition"
"Windows XP Home Edition"
Use up/down arrows to select.
So far I have left the top one selected and pressed "Enter", then XP boots
up as normal.
Big enough goof? (for someone who wanted a dual boot sysytem)

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Do two things:

1) Start/run msconfig, go to the boot.ini tab and select "check all boot
paths". It should offer to remove the extra entry.

2) Boot the WinXP CD, hit "r" to load the recovery console. From the command
prompt, run bootcfg /add. It should see the WinME installation and offer to
add it to the boot menu.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Sharon F]

I can access all partitions but the
original "C" with WinME (hidden).
The original "C" partition of 20 Gb with ME seems to be still there, but?
After I get WinXP running, I thought that I might install PM8.01 and Boot
Magic to see what happens?

Is there a user forum somewhere for Boot Magic or a good practical online
reference? There may be a chance that you can use tools from Boot Magic and
PM to regain access to ME. Have never used those so don't know what the
available tools and options are but have seen similar discussions for other
partition/boot managing combos. Someone who has used the same programs may
pop in here with more advice but until then you could pursue the Boot
Magic/PM angle a bit more.

I'm not sure what's going on with the two WinXP boot options that you're
getting now. Did you accidentally install XP twice? And are these installs
one the same partition or on different ones? You'll need to know the answer
to that regardless of what steps you end up taking next.

 

[Sunny]

Hi,

Do two things:

1) Start/run msconfig, go to the boot.ini tab and select "check all boot
paths". It should offer to remove the extra entry.

Will/should I still get the screen with just one entry of Windows XP in it
and the 30 second delay (with the option of safe mode) before it actually
boots into XP ?

2) Boot the WinXP CD, hit "r" to load the recovery console. From the command
prompt, run bootcfg /add. It should see the WinME installation and offer to
add it to the boot menu.

Just finished all the XP updates, next is printer. scanner, network,
intel/asus/creative drivers, coffee, all software, coffee, etc.
(thankfully I had IE andOE settings backed up to other drive/partitions)
After more coffee I will start on WinME, hopefully.
Thanks a lot for pointing me in the right direction
Regards

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

You can change the timeout to 3 if it doesn't do it for you after removing
the unneeded line.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Sunny]

Hi,

You can change the timeout to 3 if it doesn't do it for you after removing
the unneeded line.

Found this in the boot.ini :
"Appears that the following line in the boot.ini file does not refer to a
valid Op System
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)windows="Microsoft Windows XP home
edition/fastdetect"
Would you like to remove it from the boot.ini file"

 

[Sunny]

Forgot to add :
After I removed the second line the PC now has a black (empty) screen for
approx 3 seconds, then boots straight into Win XP.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Sunny,

That's what it's supposed to do.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[John Keiser]

If the WinME partition is hidden you should be able to use PM to make it
visible again. Then follow Rick's suggestions.

 

[Sunny]

If the WinME partition is hidden you should be able to use PM to make it
visible again. Then follow Rick's suggestions.

Install Partition Magic into WinXP ? (All drives are Fat32).
and Boot Magic ?

 

[John Keiser]

Yes. Installing PM in WinXP is fine. You aren't going to repartition.
Just "inspect." PM should allow you to see the partitions and the WinME
partition will be "hidden" [if you are in luck.] PM will walk you through
making it visible. Very easy as long as it is still there.

I don't think you really need Boot Magic as the WinXP boot prompt should let
you chose between partitions and OS automatically.