Ive got one hard drive with Windows XP on it and another with Windows ME and Linux (Kubuntu 6.10) on it. I have the one with XP set as the master and the other as the slave. I set the jumpers in the correct places, but when I start up the pc, it only starts with the master. I tried pressing F2, F8, etc. during start-up, and that didn’t work. Any suggestions?
Check your BIOS. It should have a boot priority menu. Change your first boot device to the hard drive with Kubuntu on it. A GRUB menu should appear that lets you choose which operating system you want to boot into.
Or just switch the master/slave settings?
You need a boot menu program such as Grub on the master drive,
and you need it to include all three OSs.
Okay, I tried making the drive with Ubuntu and Linux on it as the master and the one with XP on it the slave. When I start the pc, I get the message: Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device.
Maybe there’s a problem with having Windows on both drives?
correction:
The above post should start with: Okay, I tried making the drive with ME and Linux on it …
If that is the message, then Will Repair is probably right.
Did you install all of this software with the drives in the machine we’re talking about? The way you describe the drives makes me think you’ve moved them about, which may or may not be the case. If it’s not, then Kubuntu should have installed Grub, and it might be worth a visit to the Ubuntu forums to find out any suggestions - remember, the more information about what you’ve done and the order you’ve done it, then easier it for others to give helpful suggestions.
I missed the part about the master drive having to have all three OSs on it.
The drive with ME and Kubuntu has Grub on it.
If I upgrade ME to XP (which I plan on doing) and use that as the master drive and keep the drive with only XP on it as the slave, should that work?
Upgrade the ME installation to XP and also keep the XP drive? What are you trying to do? Which installations do you want to access and use? Is there anything in the ME setup which you can’t do in the XP one?
Google Grub/linux/ubuntu in various combinations. Figure out what you want, and then what you need to do.
Yes, I would like to keep XP on both drives until I eventually take all of my saved programs and files from the old XP install on the old hard drive to the new XP install on the new hard drive. Is it not possible to dual boot this way?
Well, first you put the left boot on. Then the right.
Reverse if you prefer.
No, I think you’re misunderstanding how it works. You can’t simply copy across programs from one OS to another. You have to install them on a new Windows installation.
Either I’m not following you or you’re not following me. Each hard drive does have it’s own installation of Windows on it. Do you mean a separately purchased copy of Windows? I have Windows XP on one drive and I will have a fresh install of XP along with Kubuntu on another. Won’t that be okay?
One boot at a time folks.
IF you want to dual (er, rather, triple) boot your system with ME, XP, and Linux, the easiest thing to do is install ME first, then install XP and select a new installation instead of an upgrade, then install linux last. ME assumes that it is the only OS in the system and completely wipes out the boot sector for anything else. XP is a little more intelligent. It will keep other Microsoft operating systems like ME intact, but XP doesn’t like linux and doesn’t play nice with it (bad microsft, bad bad bad…). Linux is a nice little boy and plays nice with all of the other kiddies.
If you installed XP as the master drive and also installed ME as the master drive (just with a different disk in the machine) then the two will likely never play nice together. The reason for this is that windows assigns drive letters in a particular order, and each drive basically assumed that it was the C drive while the other one wasn’t there. You can install both and flip which one is the C drive in the bios, but that will require bios fiddling every time you want to boot the machine.
As long as the operating systems are in different partitions, they will all play nice together, even if some of them are on seperate disks. ME/Linux on one disk and XP on another disk should be no problem.
Why? What are you trying to accomplish with this rather odd setup?
Since they are both the XP version of Windows, just install it once, and let it control both drives (except for the portion of one that is Linux).
I don’t want ME, XP and Linux. I want my old drive with my old installation of XP on it, and my new drive with a new installation of XP on and on the other partition Linux. The reason I now have ME and Linux on the new drive is because I haven’t yet upgraded ME to XP on that drive. Since I have the upgrade version of XP, I have to have ME installed on it first.
That’d the way I have it set up now and it’s not working. 
This is going to be difficult to do without re-installing all kinds of stuff. I think the upgrade version of XP will install without ME being installed first, but it will ask you to insert your ME disk during the installation so that it can verify that you have it. At least that’s the way older microsoft upgrade versions worked.
If your old drive was drive C, then you need to keep it as the master and make the new drive D. Unless you get fancy with a boot manager, installing XP is going to hose the MBR which will make linux un-bootable. You should be able to install XP on the second drive and leave the existing XP on the first drive. You will want to edit boot.ini later so that you can tell which one is which.
Once you have both versions of XP installed, then you can install linux. When you are installing XP on the new drive, leave the space for linux unpartitioned.
I’m not sure exactly how you got to the state you are in, but if you tried to install ME to drive D while drive C was in the machine you probably hosed your existing copy of XP.
Is this any help?
Yeah, I tried that several times (an earlier time) and I found at that ME has to be installed first and then XP is put on over that.
I didn’t know it was going to get as complicated as renaming drives. My D drive is the CD drive. I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing for now and just switch cables from one to another when I need to switch drives.
Uh oh. I already have Linux installed on the same drive as ME. If I try to upgrade ME to XP, is that going to screw up my Linux install?
No, everything I did was while having only one drive at a time hooked up.
Thanks, coffeecat; I’llcheck that out.