Installing Old OS

[Apokalipse]

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.

so you want to keep XP on the 120GB drive and install ME on the 40GB drive and you want XP to be the primary drive.
all you need to do is install ME to the 40GB drive and as Microbell said edit the boot.ini for the 2 OS's

when ME is installed go to start, run then type "C:\boot.ini" assuming the 120GB drive is master it will be C drive

to dual boot it should read

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect
D:\Windows="Microsoft Windows ME"

if you want it to call the OS by a different name you can change what is in the quotes to say "Windoze XP" or whatever you want

 

[Apokalipse]

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect
D:\Windows="Microsoft Windows ME"

I still don't know why in TF it puts the "S" in "WINDOWS" on the next line

 

[The Patriarch]

Apokalipse:

I did what you said. ME loaded fine as long as it's residing hard drive was in the master position but when I placed the XP hard disk back in the master position; ME would not load from the dual boot menu.

After clicking on ME in the dual boot menu; I get the following error message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a cop of the above file.

I am assuming this is referring to the ME operating system since I have selected it from the dual boot menu.

So how do I go about fixing this file in basic laymens terms?

 

[JQG]

Patriach, I notice that the reason you want ME is so that you can run older games for the kids.
Why don't you just install the games, right click on the desktop icon of the newly installed game, or right click on the game launch icon in the start>accessories list, select compatibilty, and change the compatibility so that the games open up as either, 95, 98, ME, NT or 2000 programs, instead of XP? It's that easy!

On the subject of dual booting, you need to install ME FIRST, then you have to reinstall XP, reagradless of whether it's on another drive. If you install XP first, the ME install won't overwrite the ini files so that ME can run, because the XP ini files are superior.
If you install ME first, the ini files get loaded, then when you install XP onto another drive or partition, it just ADDS the newer ini files for XP, therefore you can now run both.
One thing though, ME doesn't support NTFS, so if you are using NTFS with XP, you might have some problems with compression and sharing files, in which case you might find that your file system reverts back to FAT16.

I hope this helps

 

[ekÆsine]

you can thank XT for this link: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=24831


from this topic on this forum: http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8001