Dual Booting XP and ME

[doubleanti]

Well, the time has come... well half at least, I'm dual booting Xp and ME and I have questions! Right now I'm at two separate partitions on the same drive and I've installed ME, I'm planning on putting XP on the other partition. (I'm doing this so I can keep ME for AktiF and another project, and use XP for word processing, etc, and music tracking). I suppose I should use XP as my 'default' OS as it is apparently better in a few things and more clean. But how can I choose which partition to boot off of nominally, and how can I create a batch or stub to run either OS at startup? Thanks! =) Perhaps I can set A: to the first boot seek with an autoexec loading ME and insert that disk whenever I want to program. Will that be okay? Again how do I choose which partition to boot off of initially considering they are the same physical drive? Thanks folks!

=)

Sincerely,
doubleanti

PS first "I told you so / about time" reply I get man... mod-fury I tells ya! Haha, jk... thanks guys...

Edit: oh and do I have to install drivers for both OSes necessarily? Thanks...

Edit 2: oh yeah, what about software like Office XP and so forth? Thanks again! =)

[Ken Fitlike]

edit:

how can I create a batch or stub to run either OS at startup?

You don't need to: the winxp bootloader will do that for you so when you start your machine you will be presented with a choice of which os to launch.[/edit]

Originally posted by doubleanti
Again how do I choose which partition to boot off of initially considering they are the same physical drive?

In winxp right click 'My computer' and select 'properties' from pop-up menu, select 'advanced' tab of 'system properties' dialog. Click the 'settings' button in the 'start-up and recovery' section: you'll be able to select which os that starts in the 'system start-up' section and fiddle with how long to wait until the system starts.

Alternatively, edit boot.ini which amounts to the same thing.

Edit: oh and do I have to install drivers for both OSes necessarily? Thanks...

Usually, yes.

Edit 2: oh yeah, what about software like Office XP and so forth?

I've never tried installing to one and running from the other with office but since a lot of registry changes are made, activex stuff registered etc I would imagine that you'd have to install to both os's.

[Ken Fitlike]

You may also be interested in preserving disk space by using the same swap file for both os's, which is described here.

[ober]

I just have one question... WHY THE HELL ARE YOU DUAL BOOTING WITH A POS LIKE ME!?!?!?!

Why not just switch to XP for everything? I don't understand why you would need ME to do your project work. Seems to me like XP should be able to do it.

[doubleanti]

Remember how everyone was concerned that AktiF didn't work under XP? =)

[bludstayne]

IMHO, it would just be a waste of hard drive space. It's your hard drive, I guess.

[nomi]

Suggestion:

Dual boot with linux and XP....Xp can emulate win9x and linux can use WINE...

So you should be able to run most programmes....