Installing Old OS

[The Patriarch]

We updated to XP from ME over a year ago. We recently purchased an additional hard drive(Seagate 120 GB).

My wife and grandkids are now wanting the old ME OS placed on the old 40GB Western Digital. Some of the old games they used to play will not play on XP even in compatability mode.

My question is this:

Is it possible to reformat the old hard drive and reinstall ME on it with XP already installed on the new one? If so, how do I go about it or where do I find out?

I know how to swap the hard drives from slave to master.

This is my first post. I hope I got it in the right section.

Thank you

 

[ekÆsine]

i thought you said XP is istalled on the old hard drive, but than you said xp is on the new one, very contradictory

if xp is on the old 40 GB disk you can ghost xp to the new disk and format the old 40GB after saving data. what you want to do is called dual booting. it allows you to choose at startup whether you want windows ME or windows XP to load up.

if nobody offers you support here on how to dual boot me & xp you can google.com search for dual booting. this is an article i found on your specific question:

http://www.driverforum.com/harddrive4/1553.html

click the foloow-up posts at the bottom to read the replies/ answers

 

[The Patriarch]

Yes, XP is already on the new hard drive. I have Disk Wizard 2003 which came with my new hard drive.

When I reformat the old hard drive with Disc Wizard, the only options I have are
1. old hard drive as storage
2. master boot old hard drive keeping the new hard drive as storage.
3. master boot old hard drive doing away with the new hard drive.

Can I swap the drives from master drive (xp) to slave. Old hard drive to master, install ME on old hard drive and then reswap them back. Will XP then pick up the ME system on the old hard drive in the slave position?

Thanks for the previous info, will read.

 

[Marshall]

Took me a couple of walk throughs to catch it aswell guys, lol, it is a very simple question turned into a hard one, lol

if i get it right,
- You have an old HD with the worst OS ever made
- A new HD with XP,

But where you lose me is when you say you want to format the old one, even thought you you don't need to.

If you really don't want to get yourself into any trouble, it would be alot easyier for you to buy a rack, and put both HDs on cable select, that way if you turn your rack on, it will start on that one, turned off, it will boot on the other one, but you will not be able to see the turned off HD when booting on the second one

 

[Apokalipse]

I would suggest putting both XP and ME on the 40GB drive and set it as master, then use the 120GB drive for all your other stuff.
you could install ME to say C:\WinME and XP to C:\WinXP

 

[Apokalipse]

it is certainly possible to dual boot on 2 hard drives, of course one HDD will have to be master so put your OS you want to be the Primary OS on it, then put your alternative OS on the secondary HDD

 

[Apokalipse]

do you want ME or XP to be the Primary OS?

 

[Marshall]

I would never use the 40 GB for the OS's and the 120 for other stuff, for one reason, one moment or another the 120 is going to fuck up and you will be screwed,

Play it save, use the 40 for your stuff and if you havn't enought, spil over onto the 120GB

 

[The Patriarch]

Yes, XP is on the new 120 GB drive. I would like to keep it there. I am wanting a dual boot system. The old hard drive now is just sitting there. I have some programs stored on it.

If you read my initial post, I just want to use ME to play some old games on it that will not work with XP.

I read the articles that Microbell referenced in his link. I am sort of wary of messing with my XP ini boot.

Gateway just replaced the motherboard in it and I had hard time getting XP to reinstall. I had to install ME and upgrade with my XP disk. XP wouldn't install directly from the disk. I don't want to do a reinstall.

I'm leaning towards the rack right now.

Thanks a lot for all the responses and input. I have learned something.

 

[Marshall]

I have a rack in every single one of my computers for practical reasons,

When I used to use 98, I used to have a cable select sytem setup so when i go Lanning, I can boot up on 2k so I can select the folders I want to share, an option that isn't avalible on 98, it is all or nothing on 98

If you setup the rack systeme, all you have to do is turn the key at the front to boot on one OS, or turn it off for the other HD to boot up.