Dual booting - Dos Selection Menu - Plz Help

[Mikelo2k]

Hi, i have a problem... actuqally a question.

Ok, i have 2 different HDs partitioned into a total of 6 drives. Now I have Windows XP on Drive C: and want to install Windows ME on Drive E:

Now, that is not really a problem. The main thing is, I want to have a DOS menu, at system boot-up, asking me which windows to start. I have seen this done before, and I really need to know how to do it. It is URGENT. U suspect I have to modify something in Autoexec.bat telling it to ask me. Please reply soon.

Overview:
1. Want to Install Win ME onto Another Harddrive
2. Need to know how to have a Menu ask me which system to start.
3. Need to know this ASAP

Thanx in advance,
Mikelo2k

P.S Anyone have sympatico High Speed running on WinXP?

 

[tobmello]

I would assume that WindowsXP has a dual boot loader that will work to recognize both itself and ME. I know nothing about XP except that if it is a newer OS than windows nt or 2000 it would have to have a dual boot loader. I would install ME first, then install XP on a different partition. This should AUTOMATICALLY configure the dual boot for you and give you a menu selection at startup.

(I've done dualbooting before, but only with nt and win95. In this case I had to install NT AFTER I installed '95. Had I done it the other way around '95 would not have been able to configure a dual boot menu, it overwrites the master boot record or something) Hope this helps!

 

[TheOtherKiwi]

In the past I always had to install DOS first to set up a FAT partition and MBR. Install 95/98/me with multi-boot capability and then install nt/2k/xp whatever. Then the chore of setting up the boot loader is mostly done for you.

There are other ways, for example if you reinstall 95/98/me after nt/2k/xp then it will blow away the mbr, so restore it, make sure that you have a recovery disk for nt/2k/xp and run a recovery on the boot record by booting off the nt/2k/xp boot disks and selecting the Repair option.

 

[randyQ]

To set up dual booting, make sure that the w2k (or xp) is the last OS installed. It will locate the other operating systems and set up dual boot for you for all the other OS's. I have only done this with 2 OS's, never tried with 3 or more but I'm sure it is the same.