not sure how to set up dual booting

...what a coincidence as i am messing with this thing now!...i have deleted all the partitions on the 160 gbhd and have formatted it as fat 32. i have started the loading in of win ME and just as before, after a series of reboots, the screen goes blank, void of any text, etc.....could it be that the hd partition (entire 160) is too large for it to functing or load?....i can see no reason why this computer will not accept win ME as an os......

 

Have you tried just creating a 10GB fat32 partition and then installing WinME to that?

Do you have an old smaller hard drive around that you could try?

Perhaps there is other hardware on the computer that's causing a problem with WinME? Was WinME ever installed on this computer?

 

computer is brand new out of box and functioned ok with only winxp home on it and the 160gbhd....i am now at least trying to see if i can restore what i had until i can see what is going on...no other hd's around....i could, after i restore (as a learning process) wipe it all out again and try a 10gb partion and see if "me" will load into that....THIS $UCKS ROYALLY!

 

UPDATE;
after writing zero's to the hard drive (160gb) (low level format) and partitioning it as fat32, i attempted to install win ME, and as i suspected, it would not go in. after a typical series of reboots by m.e., the screen will again go blank and again void of any text, etc.......any ideas?

 

UPDATE AGAIN;

win me didn't go in so, i reformatted the hd and attempted to install win 98se and got the same problem!...

..it would appear that this dell 210L doesn't like anything that is fat32......now, i may have to contact dell.....crap!

 

DELL SUPPORT $SUCKS!

just got off of the phone after an hour with dell. the morons have advised me that the dell 210L does not work with anything other then xp!..that seems to be ridiculous!..anyone ever heard of this before?...a computer is a computer is a computer!

....i have the complete text should anyone want to read it. in it you will see the many "cop-outs" the dell "tech" threw at me to avoid my questions. i will e-mail it to anyone.

i am unaware of how dell could lock out specific microsoft products and other software and in my instance, both win me and win 98se..

 

recent developments;
....i went into the set-up function of the computer which has an sata hard drive. i found a setting for the hard drive that , in effect, may allow programs that would not usually be able or have difficulty in running on an sata hd to possibly function. so, i enabled it.

.....as you may recall, i have a 160gb-hd with a 10gb fat32 partition for the installation of win me (to play games only)..... now, using acronis, i have booted into the acronis "recovery floppy disc"(?) and have made sure that the ntfs win xp partition was hidden and that the 10gb fat32 partition was "unhidden". .......from there, i selected"format" (the fat 32) and the program said "completed".

here is where the problem starts; i have booted into the floppy drive and am attempting to load win me into what i hope will be the 10gb fat32 partition i have created. when i select format c:/s or any other drive letter imaginable, it seems i can't do it. i get a message saying that "win me has detected that drive c does not contain a valid fat32 partition...." yet, acronis shows the partition to be fat32.to add insult to injury, i shouldn't even have to format it, should i since acronis said that it had done it?...what the hell am i doing wrong now?

 

Can the WinME fdisk program see the partitions correctly? If you cancel the install and drop to the dos prompt you should be able to run fdisk. It didn't display the partition info correctly when I tried it which makes me think that it doesn't support drives this large.

 

...thanks for the reply!...yes, when i use fdisk, it indicates that there is a single fat 32 partition present....so, what would you suggest?.....i never made a partition with a "start up boot disc" before.....would this be the direct cause for the dvd drives not being recognized or no drive designations in "my computer"?....

 

...UPDATE...just got done letting fdisk make the 10gb fat32 partition and finished loading win me. however, i still have the problem with no dvd drive letters being displayed...

 

any solutions as to why no drive letters?

...anyone?