Dual booting XP and Windows ME.

[Sen Chao Fang]

I've just installed Windows XP on a new drive. I have my old Windows ME
drive, and I've placed this as a second drive.

I can boot to Windows ME by selecting the second drive as the first boot disk in
the BIOS but I'd like to accomplish this with XP's boot manager.

Can anyone tell me what entries to place in boot.ini to have a choice between XP
on the first drive (drive 0) and Windows ME on the second drive (drive 1)?

TIA.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

As the drive has changed places, WinME will change the drive letter
assignments accordingly. Essentially it's easy to add to boot.ini, but
unless WinME "sees" itself as "C", the installation will not load. It works
when you change the boot order as it will see itself that way. To leave it
as is, it will see itself as "D" or farther down the drive letter scale.

The only way that you can fix this problem is to reinstall it in its current
postition while the other drive is set to the primary position. This will
cause another problems It will overwrite the WinXP bootloader with Win9x
code, so you will have to repair it using the Recovery Console. See this
link from MVP Doug Knox on fixing this problem:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Sen Chao Fang]

As the drive has changed places, WinME will change the drive letter
assignments accordingly. Essentially it's easy to add to boot.ini, but
unless WinME "sees" itself as "C", the installation will not load. It works
when you change the boot order as it will see itself that way. To leave it
as is, it will see itself as "D" or farther down the drive letter scale.

I hadn't considered that. For the few occasions I'll need to use my old Windows
ME drive I think it's safest to continue using the BIOS to switch the boot
order.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Good choice, much easier than the alternative as long as the use is
infrequent.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

I've just installed Windows XP on a new drive. I have my old Windows ME
drive, and I've placed this as a second drive.

I can boot to Windows ME by selecting the second drive as the first boot disk in
the BIOS but I'd like to accomplish this with XP's boot manager.

Can anyone tell me what entries to place in boot.ini to have a choice between XP
on the first drive (drive 0) and Windows ME on the second drive (drive 1)?

Its more complicated than that - the dual boot has to start in the ME
partition, but using an XP boot, with a file added to be transferred to
to continue the ME one. . See instructions at Doug Knox's page
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm