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...)