Windows XP Pro and Me Dual Boot

[tjclipson]

I have Windows/Me on a physical disk of its own, and Windows XP Pro on a physical disk of its own. I had been switching cables when working with one or the other, but it is becoming bothersome to do so. So I prefer to set the two disks up with a dual boot but have not been successful, and do not wish to reinstall either.

Information on retro-setup of a dual boot involving these or other operating systems does not appear to exist. Both disks have much software that is incompatible with the other, such as differing versions of Oracle, and would require days of work to reinstall and configure. One solution I have not yet tried is to set both disks as master disks. Not copacetic years back, but I have no idea how these later operating systems may deal with the situation.

Any other suggestions or information that my resolve my problem?

[Play_The_0dds]

set the drive with ME as master, the xp as slave, if they are both on the same ribbon cable. now boot with the xp cd and start the install process, skip the recovery console. when it detects windows xp on the slave select the repair option. you wont loose your files, programs ect. will just have to reinstall any service packs and updates for xp.
make sure you select(highlight) the windows xp disk then repair, at no time format.

[njovin]

You may be able to do this by editing the boot.ini file. If you go to control panel->system->advanced(tab)->startup and recovery settings (button) and click the "Edit button"

You will see something like:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

I would add something like:

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows ME"

BE CAREFUL NOT TO DELETE WHAT'S THERE - ONLY ADD THINGS. In my example the XP HDD would be set as master (disk0) and the ME HDD as slave (disk1). Let me know if it works, I myself am curious.

[tjclipson]

My first attempt was to simply add the disk/system reference to the boot.ini as suggested in the second response to my posting. I was hoping it was that simple, but it wasn't, and came here for help.

The other suggestion - doing an XP repair install - made sense, and I tried it. However, I never did receive an option to "repair" the installation. The only valid option I found was to reinstall XP in the c:/windows folder, or specify a new folder. Both options would drop user, network, and a slew of other configuration information.

Thanks for both suggestions, but I'm still at a loss as to how to make this dual boot situation work without damaging either of the existing disk configurations.

[njovin]

One other thing, check out a piece of software called "System Commander". I've never used it myself, but it's supposed to be good for dual booting.

[tjclipson]

I resolved the problem with Boot Magic from PowerQuest.

I never doubted that Boot Magic or other such layered products would do the job. However, I prefer to not have any more layers of software than is necessary. Reliability and performance are generally much better with fewer layers. After spending hours trying to find a solution that I believe should exist implicitly in Windows software I broke down and bought Partition/Boot Magic.

Thanks for the input on other possible solutions. I learned a good deal in the process.

As a side note, I considered installing Linux which would have provided me the boot services, but found I cannot make use of it exclusive of the other boot systems. And I already have a Linux system on my network.