Windows ME/XP Dual Boot gone horribly wrong - please help

blandstalker

blandstalker

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Sorry for the cry for help post, but I'm going crazy and I have tried Google extensively.

I have a dual boot XP/ME setup. A couple of months ago, ME just stopped working -- no splash screen, no safe mode, nothing. Just a black screen with a blinking '-'. I thought it was the hard drive. I replaced that, copied all my stuff.

ME still doesn't work. Figured it might have been corrupted by hard drive errors, so I went about trying to reinstall it (which is fun stuff if you don't want to blow away XP).

Here's the latest:

I made a fresh install of ME on C: Then I made a fresh install of XP on D:. So far, so good. Both work.

I copy my existing install of XP (from a different hard drive) over the new install on D:. I need to do this because I really don't want to reinstall everything on XP.

Now, XP works just fine but ME no longer works. No splash, no safe mode, nothing. C: is still there and apparently untouched. I can boot to it with a boot disk and examine the contents, and I can see it from XP. I just can't run Windows.

This makes no sense to me. All of ME is on the C: drive, which is fresh and new. I can boot to XP, so there should be nothing wrong with the boot files.

I appreciate any help.
 
Windows ME, that's the problem right there.

Seriously though, maybe it's something in your XP install that corrupted it? I'm not sure, I've never had a problem dual booting, but seeing how you've changed everything except the XP install, it would be my guess that it might be that.
 
yeah I don't understand why you would still want to use ME but a thought that comes to mind is NTFS - I don't remember if ME even could read it so if the drive was formatted so that could cause problems perhaps.
 
Try rrunning fdisk /mbr using a dos boot dis to repair the master boot record.

Or maybe try using a third part boot manager. I forget how I did it but I usually creating partitions on the drive in such a way that they main home of each OS is hidden from each other and then use a boot manager to pick what I want to load a boot.

Another thing I use to do was to keep each os on a different drive and put each drive in a pull out tray. It was fairly easy to switch out.
 
[quote name='dragonsho']Windows ME, that's the problem right there.[/quote]
Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. However, I've used it as my son's OS, which keeps all the games and stuff away from everything else. ME is actually better for kids' games, especially older ones, though he uses fewer of the ones with wacky peripherals now.

I'd run two XPs, but I think I'd need a boot manager for that and I'm sure that would be an entirely different kind of fun.

[quote name='extzed']yeah I don't understand why you would still want to use ME but a thought that comes to mind is NTFS - I don't remember if ME even could read it so if the drive was formatted so that could cause problems perhaps.[/quote]
All FAT32 drives. ME cannot read NTFS. ME can also not read LBA partitions. That's not an issue here, because the drive is 80GB and has been formatted without LBA.

[quote name='Baron O Hell']Try rrunning fdisk /mbr using a dos boot dis to repair the master boot record. [/quote]
I'll try that next. I don't understand how copying things onto D: could affect C:'s MBR, but I have nothing to lose by trying.

Thanks for your help everyone!
 
I had a similar issue years ago. Did you covert your hard drives to FAT16/32 or kept it at NTFS?

I think it was like 5 years ago when I did this (so this might not be all correct), but I think I left it at Fat16, and managed to get it to triple boot screen. Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows 2000. Eventually Windows ME broke down (same problem as you) and I could only boot to one of the other OS's. As soon as I got a hold of XP Pro, I wiped out my hard drive again and put it to NTFS and now have XP/XP Pro.

Unfortunately the only real solutions I can think of is take your D drive, swap out the IDE cable so it's primary instead of secondary, use your XP cd to repair the windows copy and see if you can access the other drive now. If that doesn't work I say reformat and start over again.
 
So, let me get this straight. When you reinstalled Windows XP with ME already being installed, it dual booted correctly. Then, you copied over an entire Windows XP install from an old drive over your new install, and it wont boot?

Well, first off, I would just recommend going with the fresh install. Even with a good OS like Windows XP, it still can get bloated after a few years with a ton of stuff installed on it. But, if you still prefer to copy the old system over, what you need to do is not copy the BOOT.INI file. This is the file that tells Windows XP's NT Loader about the other OS'es on the drives.

I would suggest reinstalling Windows XP again, and make sure that you have not screwed up the ability to boot into ME completely. Then, make a backup copy of BOOT.INI in the XP root directory. In fact, if you want to post the contents of your boot.ini file here just to make sure you dont lose it and can get help editing it in the future, go ahead. It is just a text file with text similar to this:

[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 Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

Although, this is my file for a single boot system, so that wouldnt help you.

If you have any further questions, please let me know. And as always, this advice is provided at your own risk. I do not assume any liability for your data, personal safety, spiritual well-being, etc.

-Noise
 
Thanks for the help everyone!

Before running fdisk or fixboot, I used an ME boot CD to get to C: and ran ME setup from the C: drive, where I had copied the files from the ME OS install CD. It did a repair install of ME, which I wasn't able to do earlier (see spoiler). Now ME and XP both boot with no apparent ill effects to either.

Long story:
I started with a 120GB drive, which began to fail in October. I got a new 320GB drive, but because it requires LBA (anything over 137GB does), I couldn't use ME or fix it at all because ME scandisk can't cope with it.

Then I got a new 80GB drive, and had problems with that too! The tools I used to format and partition it were recent, so they made it LBA even when it didn't need to be. ME still couldn't install.

So a few days ago, I used the ME boot disk's fdisk to format and partition the drive, so I could fresh install ME and XP. Then I copied my old XP over the new XP. Then I was able to do a repair install of ME. Whew!

I still don't quite understand why this all worked. Copying over the D: drive where XP resides should not have affected the C: drive (which is where boot.ini resides). Perhaps the drive copy software did something to the boot records on C: that the ME reinstall fixed? That's the only thing I can think of.

Checking...okay, the ME reinstall did update boot.ini, but I think it was okay before -- it did give me the choice between XP and ME. Maybe the ME install does a fixboot for you, though it didn't mention any problems.

Again, thanks for the assistance. Now to put back my 320GB drive...
 
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