Win ME problem

[CDC Mail Guy]

Will not boot into normal mode, and will not go past the safe mode screen. I am not familiar at all with ME, only XP, but from what I hear it sucks. Not my PC, but owner wants her docs saved. Slaving it to my PC should be no problem right? Just pull her files, and then do clean install of XP. Anyway past the Safe Mode startup screen?

 

[Bluestealth]

Hold down shift at startup if you want DOS Mode(believe this works, dont know if it does with ME)... If there is a problem with it getting into windows only a reinstall will fix that.
Should be able to slave the drive fine... its fat32, no security to worry about

 

[thegorx]

Originally posted by: CDC Mail Guy
Slaving it to my PC should be no problem right? Just pull her files, and then do clean install of XP. Anyway past the Safe Mode startup screen?

Well, if she's got spyware or virues, I wouldn't put it in your machine

you may be able to get it to boot by restoring a registry in DOS
create a boot disk in XP
put a floppy in goto my computer, right click on the floppy drive, select format
check Create an MS-DOS start up disk
I think the start up disk it creates is basically a windows ME start up disk
put the start up disk in the windows ME system
at command prompt type

scanreg /restore

and try restoring a registry to see if that works

but there could be a lot of different thing wrong with the system
and even if you get the data of the drive, installing XP won't fix hardware problems.

 

[phisrow]

I'd just boot a liveCD. Any linux based one should do just fine, as would BartPE, if that's your flavour. Monkeying with a broken ME install is hardly worth it.

 

[MadRat]

Copy the WINME folder off the original cd and run the setup from their. I'd delete the windows folder and reinstall, unless there is something in there you need. Installing off the hard drive is so much faster overall, you'll appreciate the speed bump. Its probably going to cost you two hours to get it installed and patched over a cable modem.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Originally posted by: MadRat
Copy the WINME folder off the original cd and run the setup from their. I'd delete the windows folder and reinstall, unless there is something in there you need. Installing off the hard drive is so much faster overall, you'll appreciate the speed bump. Its probably going to cost you two hours to get it installed and patched over a cable modem.

Don't have access to original cd for Win ME, only have XP disk. Not sure what she needs off of the hard drive, mostly pics and word docs. I slaved it to my PC, and could copy entire E drive to my external (E is only only 20gbs)...install XP on E, and then copy important stuff back to it? Unless, of course, HDD is bad, but I haven't run disk check on it yet. Will have to wait till next reboot though I think.

 

[MadRat]

Look for a winme folder. You may have a copy and didn't know it.

 

[CDC Mail Guy]

Fixed, thanks for the help. I just copied her stuff to external HDD, installed XP from CD (couldn't find the winme folder), and put her docs and pics back on. Thanks again.