I have 2 hard drives and desired dual booting with XP Pro on one and Me on the other. I installed XP Pro on Drive 1, set as primary master (disconnected slave). Then I disconnected Drive 1, connected slave or Drive 2, but now set as primary master and installed Me. I edited boot.ini file in XP as follows to have the option to boot from either XP or Me:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional"/fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Me"/fastdetect

Then I connected both drives, Drive 1 (OS XP) as primary master and Drive 2 (OS Me) as prim slave. Booted the computer, selected to boot to XP, worked fine. Next time, selected to boot to Me BUT got the message "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: Windows\system32\Hal.dll".
Could somebody please help to sort this out, so I could boot to Me also???
Thanks and kind regards.

kumpewter
raheel_shafi@hotmail.com

If I recall correct your boot.ini file is wrong. The ME "rdisk(1)" is wrong , it will be (0) for any IDE drive, the partiton should be (2).

ME will still not work if XP is FAT32 , the registry points to drive C:\ when it is drive D:\. If it is NTFS not sure ?

Thanks Topfarmer.

I believe the boot.ini is fine because if it is XP that is installed on both hard drives, this bootloader works fine.

I have read on some discussion forums that [multi(0)disk(0)......] format (without [])of boot file does not apply to Win 9x/Me; it should be something like [C:\="Windows Me"]without []. I tried this as well but still got 'hal.dll' error message.

Also, your point about FAT32 is not right because Me also uses FAT32 format. I have had these two OSs on a single drive in two partitions and it has worked.

To follow Microsoft recommendation of install order, I have now reinstalled XP. This makes XP installation follow Me, but I am still unable to boot in to Me.

Your point about registry entry makes sense. If that is the case then how do I make registry point to D:\ ?

Just for info, my XP install uses NTFS format, hence I can not use Bootmagic utility to help out either: doesn't work on NTFS. I did try installing it on the Drive D (Win Me) but then XP wouldn't boot at all. That's how I ended up reinstalling XP (and was sort of forced to follow Microsoft's recommendation of multiboot installation order).

If somebody out there could take me step-by-step how to get this to work, I will really appreciate that.

kumpewter
raheel_shafi@hotmail.com

You are correct with the boot.ini file, I'm wrong. :)

Every thing I have read if one wants to use XP duel boot manager you need to install ME first on the C: drive than install XP on D:, do not remove the C: drive.

There is a disadvantage useing the XP boot manager- if the ME disk goes south than XP will not be bootable till a new drive is installed and then run fixboot and fixmbr from XPs recovery console, or reinstall of XP.

I much perfer a third party boot manager with out the above problem if one looses the C: drive.

some infor can be seen at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mosaddique/
http://www.mesich.com/
helpers at these forums.

Although it cost me 3 hours but I did the inevitable to fix the problem - followed your suggestion and reinstalled Me on C:, followed by XP on D:(on separate hard drives). This fixed the problem, making the choice of either OSs available at the start up. Thanks for taking time to help out, buddy !!!

kumpewter
raheel_shafi@hotmail.com

glad to see you have it going.