Dual Boot Question

[sjgmoney]

I have a computer with two hard drives, one with Win ME installed, the other with XP Pro. Is it possible to have a dual boot system where I can choose which one to boot from?

A separate problem I'm having is with ME seeing both drives. When I have the ME drive as my master the system seems to recognize both drives (setup screen shows both) but after it boots only the primary drive shows up under My Computer as the C drive. When I reverse the process and make the XP drive the master, both drives show up in setup and after boot the XP drive is the C and the ME drive shows up as the D drive. So both drives are accessible in XP but not ME, why is that?

I'm pretty sure I've got the jumper set correctly in both cases, is ME not able to work with more than one drive? Am I missing something?

And to answer the obvious question on why would I want to even bother with ME : I figured I'd let the kids bang away on that one and I could use the XP system for my work.

Thanks

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Is it possible to have a dual boot system where I can choose which one to boot from?

Yes. If you install XP Pro last it will give you a boot manager by default. Just make sure ME is on the C: drive.

A separate problem I'm having is with ME seeing both drives.

More than likely your XP drive is formatted as NTFS, which ME cannot read. To read both drives under ME, partitions must be formatted as FAT32.

 

[sjgmoney]

Let's see if I get this: Let's assume I have Computer 1 that has Win ME installed on the hard drive. I then take a hard drive out of another computer (Computer 2) that has XP installed on it and add that drive to my ME computer (which is basically what I did). Computer 1 cannot read the 2nd hard drive because it's formatted differently?

Okay I guess I get that, let's say I don't care about ME reading the second drive, but I would like to be able to have the choice to boot from the XP drive on startup. Is this possible?

How about the reverse case, where I take the hard drive containing ME and install it as the second hard drive on Computer 2. Will that work, can I dual boot in that case? How can I get the boot menu? Or will that not work?

Thanks for your reply by the way.

 

[MrChad]

You can dual boot in either case, but the ME installation will never be able to read the XP hard drive if it is formatted using NTFS. XP can read both FAT32 and NTFS partitions, so the XP installation will always be able to see both.

You might be better off setting up limited user accounts in your XP operating system and letting your kids use those. Password protect your account and place restrictions on what functions your kids' accounts can access.

 

[sjgmoney]

Okay, that sounds good, but assuming I want the kids to exclusively be on ME, how do I get the boot menu to "pop-up"?

Thanks

 

[MrChad]

The easiest way is to boot using your XP setup CD and load up the Recovery Console. From there, use the bootcfg command to set up the boot loader.

Reference

 

[sjgmoney]

Next dilemma, XP came pre-loaded on my HP machine, don't have disk. Can I find the file on the drive now, or get access to the recovery console without the disk. Thanks.

 

[sjgmoney]

Did a little googling during lunch, found a site that gave instructions on doing so but it sounds like it's not exactly bing, bam, boom easy job. How about this OSL2000 Boot Manager that I ran across, anybody ever use this? Sounds a hell of a lot easier than changing all the files around etc.

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Let's assume I have Computer 1 that has Win ME installed on the hard drive. I then take a hard drive out of another computer (Computer 2) that has XP installed on it and add that drive to my ME computer (which is basically what I did). Computer 1 cannot read the 2nd hard drive because it's formatted differently?

Yes.

Okay I guess I get that, let's say I don't care about ME reading the second drive, but I would like to be able to have the choice to boot from the XP drive on startup. Is this possible?

Yes, that is possible. As long as an OS can read it's own partition, you can multi-boot it.

How about the reverse case, where I take the hard drive containing ME and install it as the second hard drive on Computer 2. Will that work, can I dual boot in that case? How can I get the boot menu? Or will that not work?

This is not going to be that simple. Whichever hard drive you move, that installation is almost certainly going to have to be reinstalled, because the entire hardware configuration has changed. Then you will either have to install XP last (ME does not give you a boot menu), or try one of the following:
http://support.microsoft.com/?KBID=136547
http://support.microsoft.com/?KBID=153762

In these descriptions, subsistute "WinME" for "Win95" and "WinXP" for WinNT". Same thing, at least for this procedure.

Next dilemma, XP came pre-loaded on my HP machine, don't have disk. Can I find the file on the drive now, or get access to the recovery console without the disk.

No, because you need to boot off something other than the OS partition you're attempting to alter. This is why OEMs suck: they rarely give you the CDs you need to do stuff yourself.

How about this OSL2000 Boot Manager that I ran across, anybody ever use this? Sounds a hell of a lot easier than changing all the files around etc.

Never used it, but 3rd-party boot managers can solve a lot of problems like this, particularly when you're multibooting a lot of OSs (at one point I had Win98, Win2K, Linux, and BeOS on the same system).

 

[sjgmoney]

Belated thanks for your reply Fresh Daemon, I appreciate it. I fooled around the other night with GAG- the graphical boot manager(from sourceforge.net) but didn't quite have time to finish it up and see if it would work for me.

Hopefully give it a shot tonight and see. Anyone use this before?