Dual Boot question XP/ME

[biffle]

New member, and not very smart at that.

I have a Dell 4100, p3, 384 sdram, etc. that has 2 hard drives. The first is an 80gb Maxtor that has Win XP Pro and all my other up-to-date software. The second (not a partition, an actual 2nd hard drive) is a 10gb something or other that I just reformatted and loaded a fresh copy of Win ME (the Win ME discs actually came with this system a number of years ago) and some older games that need DOS to run (Heroes of Might and Magic). I understand that anything with the DOS underpinings must be the Master, so I have the Win ME drive in the first position on the IDE cable (the end of the cable,not the middle connector). The XP Pro drive is attached to the middle of the same IDE cable. Both drives are set for CS, or cable select.

When I boot up, the system Loads Win ME without ever giving me a shot at the other drive. I switched them around and got the same result, but XP loaded without letting me get to ME.

Any ideas on how to get the system to dual boot?

Thanks in advance.

biffle

[s7p9a2m4]

Your first mistake was not installing ME first. Always install the older OS first and then the next. Xp would have set up the dual boot automatically for you.
You might want to use master/slave settings for your hard drives as well but if cable select is working - leave it alone.

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

[biffle]

Thanks for the reply s7!

I read the link, and most stuff I can handle, but....

My C: drive is FAT 32 with the Win ME OS only. Technically, it WAS installed first on this particular physical hard drive because there is nothing else on it (literally, except the hardware drivers).

The second physical hard drive (you understood that I have 2 hard drives rather than trying to partition one drive right?), has XP Pro only (and my other software). The thing about this drive is it was restored from a Ghost (2003) image that included the OS, Office XP PRo, Adaware, etc etc. I can't reinstall just Win XP Pro (um, no need to get myself in trouble here), without doing it from the Ghost image. So I guess my question now becomes:

If I restore that drive (D from the Ghost image again, will it still now automatically load the dual boot loader?

And/or if I switch the jumpers to Master/Slave will it really do something different than CS?? I thought that with CS it would pick up which was installed as the Master???

Thanks again for your help!!

biffle

[s7p9a2m4]

If the hard drives are showing up in your bios properly as Hd0 and hd1 everything is hunky dorry, thus CS is working fine for you.

I doubt restoring ghost image will work. I suspect a repair install of xp while the ME hard drive is hooked up and functional may get you the dual boot you desire. Back up your data. Anything can happen.

[overload]

Originally Posted by s7p9a2m4

If the hard drives are showing up in your bios properly as Hd0 and hd1 everything is hunky dorry, thus CS is working fine for you.

I doubt restoring ghost image will work. I suspect a repair install of xp while the ME hard drive is hooked up and functional may get you the dual boot you desire. Back up your data. Anything can happen.

I agree with s7p9a2m4, but
Actually it doesn't really matter which is master and which is slave, as long as they both work. However to get the dual boot menu, you need to tell Windows XP to create it. Windows ME like 98, do not create boot menu's they just write there boot.ini files over whatever is there. So here is what you need to do.
Having both drives hooked up, and recognized, boot with a WinXP cd rom, not a drive image, an actuall XP cd. and tell it to repair the exsting winxp installation, this will hopefully create the boot.ini file properly, with the boot menu. Just as s7p9a2m4 said, Back up your data, (just in case)