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New WinME won't boot on system that dual booted ME/2k. Help?
I've got a PC that I'm trying to clean up in preparation to giving it away. It had MEPIS, Windows 2000 and Windows ME installed on it. Booting is/was managed by GRUB (from MEPIS) and then by Win2k's "boot.ini". MEPIS is on a separate partition (extX).

The plan is to pass the machine on with WinME, MEPIS and Ubuntu installed and running as well as I can make them run.

I updated Windows ME with the latest drivers and fixes, then deleted Windows 2000 (not enough licenses). (I have the Win2k install backed up (except for locked files) on another machine on the network). I have not yet deleted anything in the root directory on C:\\ so the NT boot loader is still trying to manage things. I tried following the [link|http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311578|instructions] about editing boot.ini, but even when specifying that Windows ME was the default, it always said the default was Window 2000. When I changed the descriptive text to "Windows 2000 is not present" I would end up with 3 entries: 1) Windows ME, 2) Windows 2000 is not present, 3) Windows 2000 (default). Windows ME continued to boot fine once it was selected, but I wanted to eliminate the hassle and possible confusion of the faulty boot menu.

I then figured my problems would go away if I simply got rid of the final Win2k remnants, but worried about having the system in an indeterminate state. So I read this [link|http://www.budja.com/w2k/uninstall_w2k.html|uninstall guide]. I got [link|http://aide.kibik.com/windows/download.php?op=mydown&did=13|this] Windows ME boot disk, made the floppy, then noticed sys.com was not on it. I thought that was a little strange, but no big deal. I copied sys.com from the Windows ME installation to the floppy. (I subsequently found that [link|http://filebox.vt.edu/r/rywilson/RCC/bootmec.exe|this] boot floopy has sys.com but I haven't tried it yet.)

I booted WinME from the floppy then ran "sys c:". It said "System Transferred" so I figured it was fine. But that was a mistake. :-(

I then rebooted, selected Windows on hda1 in GRUB, and was greeted with a screen that said, among other things (roughly) "Starting Windows Me to run your MS-DOS program... Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot your system." And it just sits there.

I tried copying all the NT bootloader stuff out of the root directory (boot.ini, bootsect.dos, ntldr, ntdetect.com). Command.com is present, as is io.sys. It didn't help - the same thing happens.

Bottom line: Things are somehow broken so that I can't boot WinME. How do I fix this? I don't have install disks (it came preinstalled and there's a recovery partion but I've never used it and I'm worried that it would trash everything on the disk (including MEPIS, GRUB and the updated WinME).

The machine is networked and MEPIS works, but it's not clear to me how I would back everything up to another machine on the network using MEPIS if a reinstall is required.

If the involves manipulation using MEPIS, please give detailed instructions. If something doesn't involve pointing and clicking in Linux don't assume that I know what the jargon means - I'm still a noob. :-)

Help?

Thanks a bunch!

Cheers,
Scott.
New Haven't deat with 9x machines in a while but...
I seem to recall that the system files had to be in a particular place on the partition. I think there is a "sys" command or something similar that would put the appropriate files in the correct place. I think you can do this with a boot floppy... something like sys c:. A dos based boot floppy wouldn't recognize the ntfs or ext3 sectors so it would probably come up as c:. You could probably find out with fdisk what it thinks your Me partition is.
New fdisk /mbr?
New Won't that kill GRUB?
New Probably.
New s/probably/yes/


Peter
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Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
New I believe that Mepis
can reinstall Grub from the oscenter on the liveCD. Make sure you know which partitions contain what, though...
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
]
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As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
 
 
New Some progress...
Hey,

I tried restoring the root directory on C: from my backup, and of course everything acted the same.

I did "fdisk /mbr" as Thane suggested, and it changed a few things. GRUB was disabled/wiped out, and I got the WinME boot menu, but attempting to boot to a Commmand Prompt but it didn't boot. On trying Safe Mode it ran Scandisk and then tried to restore the registry from a saved version, but then also refused to boot.

So, I started using Andrew's pointers in [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=229411|#229411]: I renamed the system.dat and user.dat files (but not the Desktop directory). I found the Setup program in c:\\windows\\options\\cabs as he said, and ran it to reinstall WinME.

It got to 61% then crashed in SUWIN (VERX.DLL @ 0002:24AE).

I then renamed the Desktop directory and ran Setup again.

Again it crashed in SUWIN (VERX.DLL @ 0002:24AE). This error seems to be related to the updated Media Player and/or Internet Explorer according to the last couple of posts in [link|http://www.computing.net/windowsme/wwwboard/forum/30734.html|this] thread. (Recall that I had updated WinME with the latest fixes, etc., before starting on this adventure.) When I've got some time I'll try moving/renaming the offending folders and .DLLs and see how it goes.

More in a day or so.

[edit:] This WinME install problem is discussed [link|http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;888555|here] at MS. Following the instructions let me reinstall it. The reinstall didn't overwrite most of the updates, so getting it back up to date with the latest fixes only required about 3 reboots rather than 20.

With WinME working again, I was able to install MEPIS and Ubuntu and am presently about to try [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=229690|fixing GRUB using Greg's suggestions].

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who sometimes enjoys learning new things even if they are obsolete...)
Expand Edited by Another Scott Oct. 16, 2005, 08:34:13 PM EDT
     WinME won't boot on system that dual booted ME/2k. Help? - (Another Scott) - (7)
         Haven't deat with 9x machines in a while but... - (hnick) - (5)
             fdisk /mbr? -NT - (inthane-chan) - (4)
                 Won't that kill GRUB? -NT - (Another Scott) - (3)
                     Probably. -NT - (inthane-chan) - (1)
                         s/probably/yes/ -NT - (pwhysall)
                     I believe that Mepis - (imric)
         Some progress... - (Another Scott)

I bumped into a dot.
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