Hello;

Right now I have two computers; one is running WinME (800 mhz system)and the other is running WinXP (3. ghz system).

I would like to take the HD with WinME and put in the WinXP computer as a slave. However, I would like to know if this can be done without losing any data, if the WinXP will see it as another drive...

Preferably, I would like the option to boot the one computer either as a WinXP OS or a WinME OS. Is there a way to do this? BTW, I am not really interested in partitioning one HD for two OS.

Many thanks for the assist on this!!

the most easy method to multi boot would be to set windows to do it when you installed the os (if you had xp installed, configure me or otherwise), however, to do a multi boot after you've installed both is hard, since it requires manual work, and you might mess up your computer. if you ran it like this with xp and me, it might load xp, and not recognize me as a os. you shouldn't lose data by putting the two drives on one computer, and xp should recognize the drives.... but since i haven't done this before, it's only my guess.

Thank you for your reply, ddcc.

Theoretically, if there was some sort of routine then to offer booting from the winxp drive or winme drive, it should be able to boot? Is this possible? I know the C drive is the default but...........just an idea.

Really the only reason I have this issue is because I have had the WinME drive for years and it has alllllll the WinME updates, etc. So, I hate to reinstall "old" WinME installation as a new partition because I probably will lose all the updates/fixes/etc as I understand MS no longer really supports it....and well, I like it

Dual booting with two disks is certainly possible. There's a lot of reading here but take a look. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q306559/

Thanks Lilliebet. This is a certainly a lot of good information. Particularly fidndng out about multi-boot systems. This may be useful in the futire.

However, what I am trying to do I do not think could be called dual or multi-boot (I am not sure what it would be called). but, what I want to do it put WinXP on Drive C and WinME on drive D (both are hard drives) and have the option to boot from either one when I start the computer.

The WinME drive is already in another computer I just want to move it over to the new computer as drive D and still have it be useful as a Win OS. I do not want to be doing any new partitions or reinstallations.

Possible?

As far as I've read, yes it's possible. You should be able to set the options as per the Knowledge Base articles. Whether C: and D: are on the same disk or separate, they are both logical drives and the literature says it can be done. Personally I've only ever done it with ME and XP on the same drive but the principle is the same..... in theory.

I'll do some more research for you but let's hope someone happens along who's actually done this before.

The problem is that you need to have the proper boot manger available for starting the two different disks.
You might be able to use a 3rd party file system manager. I recall the Linux start up manager was used a couple of years ago to boot between NT and Win9x. LILO I think it was (is) called. And I know for a fact you can read both NTFS and Fat file systems from a Linux core.
Alternatively you could reinstall either the winME or XP installations with the attendant loss of registry settings that this may cause. Conventional wisdom suggests that that should use the fat disk as your system disk but reinstalling winxp will probably cause more problems than it is worth.

lilliebet. Good to see you again.

_________________

Microsoft MVP Consumer Security 2006, 2007 & 2008

Hey Larry, how're ya doin'

ah... its like two lovers meeting again

...and being stalked by the jealous husband!!

well if you like

far be it for me to shower on the party (or rain on your parade)

Hi saytr...

what you want can be achieved in two ways...

Firstly by editing the boot.ini file to also include a pointer to WinMe on your D:\ drive


secondly by adjusting your bios settings to have your computer directly start up of your D:\ drive.. In your case your D:\ drive would be your secondary IDE hard drive - of course I'm assuming that both your hard drives are IDE drives... in case you're running SATA drives D:\ will probably be SATA drive 1 (as opposed to your SATA drive 0 which your win XP would be on)

craigtin brings up a valid point about the drive file systems..Win me cannot recognize NTFS, so if your c:\ is in NTFS format, then if you boot up into Win Me, you wont be able to access it.

Ntldr loads the operating system selected, on of two things happen
* If Windows NT is selected, Ntldr runs Ntdetect.com
* For other operating system, Ntldr loads and runs Bootsect.dos and passes control to it. The Windows NT process ends here

So this means that bootsect.dos needs to have an entry in it for any OS that is not related to NT.

here is a website that give more information about booting with ntldr

and here is one that describes other bootloaders

If you want to read the ntfs partition from the Win9x OS you can try NTFSDOS from sysinternals.com