Maybe somebody can help me out here ....

I normally run WinXP Pro on my Cdrive (the primary partition of my main drive - FAT32) and dual boot to WinME on my Ddrive (the primary partition on my second drive - FAT16).

There were no problems until i installed sp1 (I reformatted and did a clean install of WinXP +SP1 using a slipstreamed cd) ... now WinXP works well .... but it didn't automatically give me a dual boot option.

I adjusted the boot.ini and got the dual boot option screen- but selecting WinME does nothing - well actually it looks in my cdrom (my J drive) and finding nothing ... it reverts back to the option screen.

I went into the recovery console and ran fixboot and fixmbr with no success.

MS knowledge base addressed the issue about when XP won't load, but not the other way round.

Checked out Doug Knox's site and followed his ideas for reinstalling the boot sector for winxp - but that must have been pre sp1 .. no luck with that.

I even played with the "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)" values
without success ... and yes i did try reinstalling WinXP (and reinstalled a backup winme image to the d drive .... still no luck.

Next was to load bootmagic and use it instead ... but guess what ... same result ...

So ..... has anybody else had this problem? heard of it? or more
importantly ... found a solution????

Cheers :blink: :blink: :blink:





Last edited by Blue at Oct 6 2002, 04:55 AM

Have you tried reinstalling Win Me on top of itself? My guess is that when you formatted c:\ , you wiped out files necessary for your dual boot.

If you had Win Me on C:\ and XP on the other drive, and you reformatted c:\ to reinstall WinME, I would say you definitely wiped out the files necessary for a dual boot and would suggest repairing or reinstalling XP

I think when you formatted you lost the file necessary to boot ME or 9.x "bootsect.dos". It had the correct pointers to start IO.sys and Msdos.sys and launch ME, and would have been on the root of the C drive before the format.

There was an excellent post here by khauyeung at one time on how to generate this file when adding a Win-9x OS into an existing XP installation. (Normally of course it is done the other way around with 9.x on the primary).
I can't seem to find that post right now, perhaps someone can help.

Otherwise, I think Richard is correct. Your going to need to re-install ME. (loosing the option to boot to XP). Then your going to have to the "fix boot" again, or restart the XP installation from within ME and choose the repair option.

Hate to say it, but if your going to go through all that you might as well reinstall with ME on the primary C: and XP onto D:
Best of luck Blue,
Dave



Last edited by DaveH at Oct 5 2002, 11:30 PM

DaveH has given an excellent answer :)
He says: but if you are going to go through all that you might as well reinstall with ME on the primary C: and XP onto D:
i would reckon that too. you must remember these two things when dual booting. 1. Install the older OS first and install the dual-boot supported OS next.
2. Install Win98/ME in the Primary Master (C:) and install Win2000/XP in the Primary Slave (D:).
after u install like that, you can format your Primary Slave anytime you want and reinstall Windows 2000/XP as many times as you can, until you DON'T harm the C: drive. Guys, add more ideas. that's all i could say :)

I go along with that too



Last edited by richardc2000 at Oct 7 2002, 05:22 PM

I forgot to add this, but Boot Magic won't work either.
Boot Magic works through advanced partition hiding.
In essance your ME Partition would have to become a primary and BM would switch between both primary partitions and hide the other one.
You actually end up with 2 C drives, with only one visible at a time.
If your ME partition became C, every single registry entry for system files and all your installed programs would then be incorrect.
Sorry about that, but thought I would point that out.
(Been there, done that)
Dave

Thanks everybody your help .... finally it's working ... i had to reinstall WinME after WinXP (I swear to god when i set it up originally it wouldn't work this way ... WinXP had to be installed second)

After installing WinME the dual boot would work but the default was to WinMe not WinXP

I tried deleting the bootsect.dos and recreating it using the read.scn file ... but that just recreated my original problem

So i ended up going back to the bootsect.dos file that WinME installed and just editing the boot.ini file to change the default ... it works great now ... but that sure wasn't how i set things up before ... i have to assume the difference is from installing WinXPSP1 from a slipstreamed disc vs installing from the original disc then applying the patch ... I just can't wait to have to reinstall it again, lol

Thanks again for the help and suggestions.

try the following without reinstalling winME or win2K

Re-extract the files 'NTLDR' and 'ntdetect.com' again, from the XP CD. (CD Boot - Recovery Console Prompt) copy F:\i386\NTLDR C:\ copy F:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:\

Thanks jc ... I'll save that tip for next time ... I assume you're suggesting to reinstall NTLDR and Ntdetect from the original WinXP cd, not the slipstreamed one.

You change the default system by editing boot.ini file that should be in the root of c:\