not sure how to set up dual booting

greetings,
with this program, i understand that it i am able to run multiple operating systems on one hard drive. so, when it gets to the part that asks for what type of partition i want, which selection do i select (active, primary, or logical?).

in the active, i have win xp home and only win xp home on the hard drive in one partition and no others. i have made a "recovery cd disc" as it suggested. i want to install win- -me on another small partition of 10gbs and not get locked out of my win xp home.

then, there is an issue of formating that partition for the installation of win me....

also, when i boot up my computer, will i be able to manually select what os i want to use? thanks!! i do not want to lock out or damage my current installation in any way.....thanks for any assistance you can give!

edit; if i am successful in doing this, will i see a c+d (or whatever) drive letter in "my computer"?

ANOTHER EDIT!...i have managed to get to the point where i have created a fat 32 partition on my hard drive and have installed the boot manager. i have selected teh boot manager to boot from the floppy drive of which i have inserted the start up disc for windows mellenium. the cd rom drive has the win me operating system disc inserted in it also.***this is where i get confused! when the win ME starts up and wants to install, i get a message that says that another os has been detected and that if i go farther with the installation, it will over-write or render that os inaccessible (if i understood what the message was). what did i do wrong and how do i get past this w/o affecting my current win xp home installation or partition?...thansk again.

 

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have WinXP on the first partition and have created a new Fat32 partition at the end of the disk for WinME.

In order to install WinME without it getting confused, you'll need to use Disk Director and mark the XP partition "hidden" and mark the WinME (Fat32) partition as "Active, Primary". Then when you try to install it should see the new partition. If it does see the XP partition, just make sure to select the WinME partition to install to. I know that this works for XP, but I haven't tried it with ME. XP install will still see the hidden partition.

It's also a good idea to name your partitions so you can tell them apart on the rescue cd. The XP partition could be named WinXP and the ME partition could be WinME for example.

When you setup OSS, it's generally a good idea to keep the partitions hidden from each other. That way they can both be drive C and D will be your CD drive. When you boot your computer you'll get a menu and be able to select which operating system you want to boot. You can also set a default that will boot after a few seconds so the computer will start unattended if you want.

As always, please do backup any important files you have on your computer before working with partitioning, installing OS's, etc. It's generally pretty safe, but things can happen.

 

You could check the manual if you haven't. I think there's a section on installing various OS's and any specific problems.

Also, if the hard drive is very large, WinME may have a problem being installed at the end. I would think that if it can see the partition during install that it would work okay.

 

########################################

If I'm understanding you correctly, you have WinXP on the first partition and have created a new Fat32 partition at the end of the disk for WinME.
***correct

In order to install WinME without it getting confused, you'll need to use Disk Director and mark the XP partition "hidden" and mark the WinME (Fat32) partition as "Active, Primary". Then when you try to install it should see the new partition. If it does see the XP partition, just make sure to select the WinME partition to install to. I know that this works for XP, but I haven't tried it with ME. XP install will still see the hidden partition.
***ok, i will try this


It's also a good idea to name your partitions so you can tell them apart on the rescue cd. The XP partition could be named WinXP and the ME partition could be WinME for example.
***all i see are the drive letters, the c drive and the letter designation for the empty fat 32 partition. also, i have made a recovery disc (i think) before i did all this so, do i have to make another one which will be for the entire hard drive, or does one have to be made for each partition?
When you setup OSS, it's generally a good idea to keep the partitions hidden from each other. That way they can both be drive C and D will be your CD drive. When you boot your computer you'll get a menu and be able to select which operating system you want to boot. You can also set a default that will boot after a few seconds so the computer will start unattended if you want.
***i have already selected which os to boot from automattically (win xp).

As always, please do backup any important files you have on your computer before working with partitioning, installing OS's, etc. It's generally pretty safe, but things can happen.[/QUOTE]
***a-ok

 

....ok, progress so far.....hid the win xp partition and have part-way installed win me, and that is where another problem starts!

....after a series of reboots called for by the win me set-up operating disc, the screen is BLANK, free from all text and figures!...ugh!.......never had this happen before!.....the total hard drive capacity is 160gb's of which the me partition is approx 11gbs's......what now?....thanks for any replies!

 

I assume you marked the WinME partition as "active" and "primary".

During the install process, did you let it format the partition? I had a problem on one of my XP Pro installs that was fixed by allowing the install program to format the partition.

Also, according to the manual, they recommend installing WinME (along with any other DOS based OS's) in the first 2GB of hard disk space. However, WinME can see large hard drives so I don't really think this is the problem.

 

###############################

***based on what i saw, it was installed on the last 10 gb's of the hard drive

 

....does this program have the ability to "clone/copy" my entire hard drive to dvd discs?.....what i may try to do is to make a restore copy of my hard drive and then format it (hd).....then, install win me FIRST and then try partitioning and attempt to install win xp home into it and see if it "takes".....may just be an exercise in futility but, what do ya think?

 

Disk Director can't clone/copy the entire disk. You would need True Image for that. Also, backing up to dvds is very slow and quite problematic for some people especially if it spans more than one dvd. You might want to visit the True Image forum and take a look.

If you copy or backup and restore the XP boot partition you'll have to modifiy the boot.ini file to point to the correct new partition.

As for it being an exercise in futility, that depends how you look at it. I've done similar things over the years and learned a lot. If you have a spare hard drive you could install that and work with it and not even risk your current drive. You could install WinME, Disk Director, OSS, etc. and then setup a new partition for XP and install it.

 

Have you met the requirements for using a disk that is bigger than 137 Gb in Win ME, per this link: http://www.48bitlba.com/quick_facts.htm. Normally, WIN 98 and WIN ME cannot handle this size disk beyond 137 Gb.

Usually, it is best to install Windows operating systems in the order of oldest to newest, per this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559.

This link may be useful for installing WIN 98/ME after WIN XP:
http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_98_after_windows_xp.htm

I used Acronis DD to divide a 160 Gb disk as follows: C for WIN 98 as FAT32 active primary, D for WIN 2000 as NTFS primary, E for WIN XP as NTFS primary, then EXT3 and LINUX Swap for Ubuntu Linux (see http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/05/08/dual-boot-laptop.html). All previous below 137 Gb. The rest of the disk above 137 Gb is data for WIN 2000 and WIN XP. I installed the operating systems in the order given.

 

......thanks for the reply!i have read all of the articles and i think i have met all the requirements...

1)..i had installed win xp home on my 160gb hd....
2)..then, installed (after installing a crap-load of programs) acronis.
3).. i then partitioned the hd to a 10gb partition and it asked me what type
and i selected fat32.
4)...from there, i used the operating system selector to have the computer
hide the winxp partition and...
5)... then booted into a floppy and cd rom which held the winME program
on disc...
6)....i proceeded to load the os (win me)and after a series of
reboots as required by "ME", the screen went blank and void
of all text, etc......and that is as far as i have gotten pending
solutions from this forum....

 

........anyone?

 

.....i just had a thought...could it be that the loading of win ME on the 10gb partition i created on my hard drive (please read previous posts) is crapping out because i only have 247 mb's of ram installed?...

(before anyone says anything, i have ordered and should be here on monday, 1 gb of ram..)

 

in true image, i can't seem to find a way to copy image to a dvd nor do i see any selection to do that....any ideas?

 

XP will probably appreciate the 1GB, but I don't think 246MB should be a problem for WinME. I think it did fine with 64MB or 128MB.

I ran part of a test senario on one of my computers with a 160GB hard drive. I created an active/primary 11GB Fat32 partition at the end, hid the XP partition and booted from the WinME install cd. It saw the XP partition and thought it was a different OS. Also the screens are a bit confusing as to which partition WinME is going to install to. It says there is data, for example, which there isn't. I cancelled the install and dropped to the C: prompt. A 'dir' shows the 11GB free space so 'C' is correct at the prompt. However, fdisk does not show the partition structures correctly (the numbers were wrong). This makes me wonder if the WinME cd can support large hard drives as it originally was. Perhaps it only can after having drivers upgraded in an installed version. I could not continue with the install though because my WinME cd will only install on a specific computer.

I don't know how much free space you have on your XP partition. Would it be be possible to create the Fat32 WinME partition under 137MB? For example, your XP partition could be 110MB and the WinME partition could be 10MB after that.

The other option would be to install WinME first and then install XP. That way WinME is at the start of the hard drive.

 

A read through the manual would probably help with the specifics. True Image version 9 or 10 is needed. Basically, you need to select the dvd drive as the destination for the backup. However, as stated previuously, dvd backups with TI are very slow and can be problematic especially if the backup does not fit on one dvd. An external USB 2 drive is a lot faster and more reliable.

 

...thanks for the reply!..i have a 160 hd...10gb is a partition i put up to install win me on it...so, i don't think partition size is the issue as it is only going in 10gigs...

 

The size is not the issue. 10GB is fine for a WinME parition. The problem is the WinME install cd may not be able to correctly install if the 10GB partition is after 137GB. You would need to pretend your hard drive was only 130GB or so and not go over that total in both partitions. This is why it might work properly with the WinME partition at the beginning of the hard drive and not when it's at the end.

 

..i did read through the manual and derived very little from it. when i went to select a full hard drive backup, it went to a screen that wanted a name for the file. as i go that far and hit "next", it wanted to copy the image to that partition and location on the hard drive and had no selection(s) for it to copy to removeable media. even if i burned that image to a dvd, it would not work as the image is approx 7gigs and the dvd's are 4.3.......see the problem?....thanks again for the response!

 

What version and build of True Image are you using?

What are your computer specs?

The fact that the image exceeds one dvd it not the problem. TI would just ask for another dvd and continue. The problem is that doing a verify or restore from dvds requires a lot of disk swapping and is very slow if/when it works. Just two dvds might not be too bad though.

Do you have an external USB 2 hard drive that you could use for the backup?

 

...no, i do not. the image must be placed on a dvd)s) as this computer is a gift for my computer illiterate brother.

....................

 

In TI, follow the backup wizard to the "Backup Archive Location" step. Select the dvd burner drive in the list. The drive letter will appear in the box below. Type in the name of the backup, "dvdbackup" or whatever you want. Then proceed to the next step.

Hopefully you won't have to swap too much with just two dvds.

I don't use the dvd backup feature much. I've just played around with it and run a few tests. If you have too much trouble with it you might want to post a new question in the True Image forum.

If you use a program like Nero to burn the image to dvds it's better to have TI split the image into dvd sized chunks. Again, there are many posts in the True Image forum regarding this.

 

...thanks for the reply..i will recheck the program and see if somehow i missed that particular suggestion/option to use dvd's and i will even write it down as i go along to post the steps here....if i get through this problem, therin lies the other as to why M.E. craps out when loading. my intent is now to copy the current partition and format the entire disc. then, just load ME onto it (if it will work), resize the partition and see if i can load xp home...thanks again forum for all your help, and i mean that!.....i will report back asap...

 

UPDATE
...there still is no written selection for copying to dvd. however, there is a box for file storage location (so-to-speak) and in that box i had to write down the specific path to my dvd-rw drive and as i currently write this, the image of the entire hard drive is burning to two dvd's.

...now, what i will do is format the hard drive and attempt to install win ME first. then, partition the drive so that i can attempt to install xp home. at that point, i will attempt to resize the partitions so that win me sits on only 10gbs.

...question;
if i do the partitioning as mentioned above, can i use "T.I." to restore the image of xp onto the drive (empty partition) where i intend xp to go or do i have to install xp onto that partition and restore (overwrite) from there.? the restore image will have all my settings and programs whereas, if i just install xp, it will have nothing.

....thanks again!

 

It it were me and I was only using dvds for backup, I would make two or threee backup sets in case one of the dvds went bad. Also make sure you can verify the backup images. It's no good to find out after you erase your partition that your backups are no good. You should also make sure your computer hardware is supported by booting from the rescue cd and doing a dvd verify from there. Also make sure your hard drives are found, etc.

After you have a valid backup (or several) then you could also try to resize the XP partition smaller. Say to 100GB. Then create a small 10GB fat32 partition after that and try the steps to install WinME. If this works you wouldn't have to erase your XP setup.

If you erase the hard drive you could make a 10GB parition for WinME before installing WinME and then you wouldn't have to resize it later. At that point, however, it really makes no difference as the drive has been reset and if it doesn't work you can start over and try something else without losing anything.

If you do end up moving your XP partition to the second partition, then you'll need to edit the boot.ini file so it will start. You should be able to restore it into the new partition and have it work. Remember to hide the WinME partition for the XP OS or it won't be the C drive.