Win ME won't boot

[pcdoc4christ]

Flame:

LOL! Nope, U R not an Argonaut!  Maybe after you finish your 1st brush with the gods you may apply for the job!  



Jason:  

OK, the Windows Me boot disk will *not* work when you have Windows NT, 2000 or XP also installed.  Please answer a few questions to save time:

1. Which is the second operating system (OS)?

2. Is there a third OS?  If so, what is it?

3. How many partitions or logical drives do you have?  (i.e. when you used to open My Computer, did it show three drives--drive C: as Windows Me, drive D: as the other OS and drive E: as the CD or DVD drive?).

4. Do you have the installation CD for both OSes?

5. What was/were the name(s) of the registry file(s) you deleted? (e.g. SYSTEM.DAT? USER.DAT? SAM? System? SECURITY? Software?).  

6. And what were the names of any other files you may have deleted?  Let us know if you remember.

What you may have to do is a reinstallation of Windows Me, and then do a repair installation of the second OS.  When you are finished with this process, you may have to reinstall some of your programs and you may lose any files in the shared folder.

I'll check in to see your reply, or i'm sure Flame and Merlin will be able to tell you what to do next.

Regards,
Doc

[jason o]

I only have one partition.  I finally got a copy of XP to boot from the CD.  Since I was scared of my wife, I could not install in Windows directory and created another.  I know this is not preferred but I couldn't risk losing the work.  I was able to retrieve the files to save my neck, but now none of my software is accessible.  I have saved the wife's work and borrowed a replacement machine, but I would like to get my software going again.

The files I deleted were the system.dat and user.dat from the registry of winme.

How can I get to office, publisher etc from xp?

[Gustaaf]

Usually Windows ME does create backups of its registry file during startup. look for files called USER.* and SYSTEM.* and rename the most recent to *.DAT

A windows ME bootdisk is about the only diskette that would boot ME and view the disk. You can create a bootable ME diskette under XP by formatting a new diskette and selecting the option create a DOS diskette.

those system and user files should be in c:\windows folder itself. It could also be c:\windows\system

[merlin_2]

did this pc come with winme ......pre-install on it.......<you have restore disks..> use them to restore the system!!!.. or did it?? >>you must have used a partition manager  to have the nt error!>!where you try to dual boot..........two o/s system on the hard drive.....if you have powerquest......use the back up disks....