Got a question about a dual boot system.

[Phalanx01]

I have 2 HDs, a Maxtor 80Gigs and a Seagate 20Gigs. My 80 gigs HD is formatted in NTFS and has WinXP on it, the 20 gigs on the other hand is formatted in FAT32. I used to use the 20gigs drive for file storage, but since I bought some non XP stuff (Yup, I should check the system specs more carefully...) I was thinking of using my 20 gigs HD as a WinME "station" and keep my WinXP on the 80 gigs. My question is; is it still possible to install WinME on the 20gigs HD when I already installed WinXP on my 80 gigs drive and use that system like a dual/multi boot?

*And why doesn't DOS seem to be able to find my FAT32 HD while it can perfectly find my NTFS drive???

 

[khha4113]

It's more complicated to make a Dual-boot since you already setup WinXP, but you don't need to make Dual-boot if your mobo's BIOS supports booting from Slave or secondary channel (usually it's like HD-1 or HD-2 in BIOS). You can install WinME on Seagate, and change BIOS setting to which HD you want to boot.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[nausicaa]

i'm not 100% sure if this will work, but i believe it will...i'm sure some others on the forum can confirm or dismiss what i'm about to say.
install WinME on the 20GB drive making sure to assign the drive to Dassuming WinXP is C. now switch jumpers to make it a slave and hook up both drives. boot to WinXP and edit boot.ini(at C. to do this, uncheck 'hide protected operating system files' in folder options, then edit boot.ini using notepad...at the bottom add something like this...D:\Windows="Microsoft Windows ME"...you can also lower the wait time to whatever you please. next time you reboot, you should have a choice of what os to boot.
good luck,
- nausicaa

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22270" target="_new">My System</A>

 

[Phalanx01]

Thanks for the hints, although I must say that I am not that crazy about changing my boot.ini file... I did check it out though, but it's a bit of a confusing mess. This is what is in my boot.ini file:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

So if I understand correctly, I simply need to add a line at the bottom to get a boot selection, right?

->And how do I install WinME? Do I put the jumper on master for the Seagate and go to DOS mode to install or can I simply install WinME from WinXP on my 20Gig HD?

 

[nausicaa]

thats right...just add that line at the bottom...and where it says timeout=30, that means the boot menu will be shown for 30 seconds...after the time runs out it will boot to the default (WinXP). and don't worry about changing the file...you can always just delete the new line you put in.

as for installing winME, change jumpers to make it a master and plug it in by itself. Assign D: to the drive and install winME to D:\Windows. you can't install winME from winXP as far as i know.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22270" target="_new">My System</A>

 

[marneus]

All dualboot systems I have done require your W9x os installed 1st & then NT/XP... then you can get a bootmenu to choose from, it will not work installing w9x second as it is not able to create this boot menu & so you would lose access to NT/XP... besides W9x cannot read NTFS partitions...

Hmmm, wonder if I can get a valid page fault ???
these invalid ones are far too commonplace...

 

[khha4113]

You can still install Win9x or ME <b>after</b> WinXP, but it's a little trickier to setup. You need to modify WinXP <b>Boot.ini</b> (as mentioned on above posts), <b>move</b> (that means you have to delete this file in WinXP's boot sector) this file along with some files as NTDETECT.COM, NTDLR AND BOOTSEC.DOS (if applicable) to Win9x boot sector (eg. C:\), and repair <b><font color=red>WinXP bootloader</b></font color=red> in order to use Dual-boot WinXP and 9x.
To fix bootloader, you need to boot your comp with WinXP CD. At its <b>Setup</b> menu, choose <b>Repair</b> then which WinXP installation you want to access (it requires you have administrator's password). At command prompt, type 'fixboot' to repair, and then restart your comp.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[Phalanx01]

Thanks for all the hints there, people, I tried it our on an older system I have here (P3 800Mhz.) and it worked. Gonna try the same thing on my P4 in the weekends then.

I just HOPE that my bloody graphics card won't play tricks on me again... and yup, it's an ATI RADEON 8500, the famed trouble cards... guess I should have read the reviews before I bought the thing.