Multi boot configuration using Windows XP and ME

[Danny Barlow]

I recently acquired another hard drive (my old one) which
has windows ME installed on it and I have the current
drive with Windows XP. I slaved the ME drive to the XP
drive and i also have a CDROM drive with a CDRW slaved to
it. Now, i have set up the boot.ini file manually and
it's contents are as follows:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft
Windows Millenium Edition *UNDER
CONSTRUCTION*" /fastdetect

Unfortunately, when i try to load ME i got a message
saying: could not load ntoskrnl.exe please re-install. I
copied this file over from the xp system directory over
to the same location over on the ME drive and then i got
a message saying it could not find the correct dlls. so
once again i copied the required dlls over (by looking at
a bootlog i made) and it says i need to reinstall. Would
it help if i slaved the CDROM to the XP drive and then
set the ME drive as a second master and slave the CDRW to
it? Or is there another possible solution i might have
overlooked. The precedence and order of installing the
windows (DOS, 95, 98/me, 2k then NT) should not be
applicable since the two OS' are on different volumes.
Any help would be appreciated because i have some
programs that would work better on my ME version of
windows. Thank you very much.

[Rick "Nutcase" Rogers]

Hi Danny,

You may need to reinstall WinME to its current location unless you use a boot manager that has a swap feature. The problems are occurring for two possible reasons: 1)WinME was installed as "C", but no longer sees itself as "C" and 2) if the WinXP system is using NTFS, then you cannot boot WinME from the NTFS partition.

If the boot partition is using NTFS (which I suspect it is), you need a boot manager. You cannot boot a 9x system from an NTFS partition.

Boot Managers and Partitioning programs:

BootIT NG www.terabyteunlimited.com
Partition Magic www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic
Partition Commander http://www.v-com.com/product/pc_ind.html
Ranish Partition Manager http://www.ranish.com/part/

If the boot partition is using FAT32, then you will need to reinstall WinME so that it sees itself as a different drive letter. When you start it as it is now, it is looking for its system files on C, as that is how it was installed. Of course, it cannot find them there, as C is now the WinXP system. You cannot change all the pointers in the system registry and core system files without reinstalling. See this link from MVP Doug Knox on how to repair the bootloader afterwards (the reinstall will overwrite the WinXP bootloader with 9x code):

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Win98 Help - www.rickrogers.org

"Danny Barlow" <bubrod...@aol.com> wrote in message news:026101c2f5bf$a4cafbc0$a501...@phx.gbl...