xp & me dual boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jerry O'Sullivan
  • Start date Start date
J

Jerry O'Sullivan

I want to create a dual boot system with Windows ME and
and XP because I have inherited a scanner that does not
work under XP. Most Microsoft advice recommends
formatting with FAT32 so that each OS can see the
totality of the hard drive. I'm not necessarily
concerned with that. XP will be my main OS.

My main question is ... Is it viable to partition the HD
with a NTFS partition and a FAT32. In which case I
believe that XP can see the whole of the HD and ME can
see its share.

I realize it would be much better to buy a new scanner
but there are other forward compatabily reasons as well
that I don't want folks to get sidetracked with. A dual
boot, if feasable, seems to be the best solution. My
concern with the Microsoft technical advice is that I
would like to maintain the benefits of the NTFS file
system.

Thanks for your help,

Jerry

Thanks,

Jerry
 
Jerry O'Sullivan said:
My main question is ... Is it viable to partition the HD
with a NTFS partition and a FAT32. In which case I
believe that XP can see the whole of the HD and ME can
see its share.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this cannot be done without losing all the data on the disk
or using third-party partitionizing software.
C must be in FAT32 because ME will boot from C by default.
 
So first off I'll need to get 3rd party partitioning
software since Microsoft products won't allow me to do
this. I remember Fdisk having some flexibilty with file
allocation tables but I don't think it's geared for NTFS.

I only intend on making the ME volume/partiton something
like 5 or 10% of my drive capacity. This would need to
be C: for ME legacy reasons and would be FAT32. D: would
be NTFS. I would install ME first and XP second.

Somewhere along the line I would setup a screen where I
would have a choice of OS during boot. I have seen this
dialog screen in XP. My understanding is that XP would
put this choice in some sort of boot record that gets
called and executed in between the handoff between POST
and OS.

Does this mesh with your understanding?

I understand that all my data on the hard drive will be
lost after reformatting and partitioning.



Thanks,

Jerry
 
Jerry said:
So first off I'll need to get 3rd party partitioning
software since Microsoft products won't allow me to do
this. I remember Fdisk having some flexibilty with file
allocation tables but I don't think it's geared for NTFS.

I only intend on making the ME volume/partiton something
like 5 or 10% of my drive capacity. This would need to
be C: for ME legacy reasons and would be FAT32. D: would
be NTFS. I would install ME first and XP second.

Somewhere along the line I would setup a screen where I
would have a choice of OS during boot. I have seen this
dialog screen in XP. My understanding is that XP would
put this choice in some sort of boot record that gets
called and executed in between the handoff between POST
and OS.

Does this mesh with your understanding?

I understand that all my data on the hard drive will be
lost after reformatting and partitioning.
Click to expand...

If you are willing to nuke the current installation, you will not need to
use a third party program. Make sure you perform a clean installation of XP
after ME. You will be given the option to format the D: partition in NTFS
during the installation. The boot files for XP will be placed in the root of
the C: drive and you will automatically get the boot screen when you restart
the system after the installations are complete.

Reference:

Multibooting with Windows XP: Installing Windows XP with MS-DOS, Windows 95,
Windows 98, or Windows Millennium Edition:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/multiboot.mspx


--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

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