Issues Installing Windows ME

[dencorso]

Our "job" is currently at a standstill until then.

Right! Too many questions... too little answers.

I join submix86 at suggesting you all should wait for Montjuleant to reply to the many already posed questions before proceeding...

[Montjuleant]

Hi, thanks everyone for the swift and detailed replies, and I apologize for not being able to respond until now!

As I'm not going to be able to be in possession of any floppy disks until tommorrow, (I should have mentioned, I -DO- have a floppy disk drive on the system), I decided to try and extract the install disk's contents onto my 2nd hard drive from within windows, then boot into the MS-DOS boot image, and run the set-up off of that. This was successful, but shortly into the install I was kicked out due to my primary drive being formatted in NTFS, (It still had Windows XP on it at this point). I rebooted into MS-DOS, and ran FDISK to format the drive, and restarted.

After restarting and choosing to boot from CD, however, on the "Start Setup from CD", "Start Windows With CD-ROM Support", etc, screen, my attention was diverted elsewhere for a short moment, and I neglected to choose to start without CD-ROM support before the timer counted down, and it tried to start the setup from CD again... and this time, it worked!?

I may be speaking a bit too soon, as I'm only formatting the drive in the Windows ME setup, and have not yet fully installed it, but it seems to be working now, despite me changing almost nothing on the system.

The only things I did change between this attempt at installing, and my previous one earlier this morning, was I had two drives formatted with NTFS, which are now FAT32, and I swapped out my dying AGP nVidia graphics card for an ancient PCI "Trident TGUI 9680" I found in an older system, and swapped from using AGP to PCI for my video output in my BIOS. Could this have had an effect?

Also, sorry for a lack of information on the system. I was unable to get any information from the Dell link submix8c posted regarding my system configuration, and at this point I don't really want to try and remove my CD drive, but one of the two CD Drives I tried the disk on, (Which I did a very poor job of mentioning in the OP post) was a Mitsumi, Model No. CRMC-FX810T4.

[submix8c]

Yes, the Mitsumi MAY have caused it.

http://www.computerhope.com/cdromd.htm

XP Install is perfectly happy with nearly ANY drive.

ALSO if you have TWO CD-ROM drives, that COULD get you into trouble. Post #31 -

XP Install is perfectly happy with MULTIPLE drives.

Your post is STILL confusing

As I'm not going to be able to be in possession of any floppy disks until tomorrow

<snip>

I decided to try and extract the install disk's contents onto my 2nd hard drive from within windows, then boot into the MS-DOS boot image

So, was that a REAL CD or an ISO image? You used the tools suggested? How did you "boot" from the Image?

information from the Dell

?The Service Tag ALWAYS gives that info, even on an OLDER one (eg Dell 4600 which brother has). It will be located on a Sticker on the back OR will display in the BIOS.

swapped out my dying AGP

This would have been irrelevant to the problem since you WERE initially getting a screen, but OK, for the best (if you say so).

but one of the two CD Drives I tried the disk on

So you DO have two CD-ROM drives in it now?

Please explain or OTHER members (or internet search) will find VERY vague information about the "solution". Not cool!

side note - betting it INITIALLY had WinME (from factory) on it anyway (pre-XP/post-98). Only up-to-Win2k for drivers are listed (which usually work w/XP), including WinME. The Trident MAY give problems with WinME (driver availability) .

[jaclaz]

If a Linux or other "live CD" is used to boot the machine and load a "live OS," which holds the CD drive in use to run, then how is the OP supposed to insert the ME CDROM at this point and copy to the HDD? (Unless there are 2 CDROM drives...)

Most "live" Linux CD's (not all of them, only the "good" ones ) are loaded ENTIRELY in Ram and allow to eject the CD once they have booted.

JFYI also any BartPE or similar using one of the available RAMDISK options will behave like that.

Example:

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/howPuppyWorks

A fundamental objective of Puppy is that everything should load into ramdisk, thus freeing up the CD drive so that you can use the CD drive for other purposes

@submix8c

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)

Hey, make a MDS WinBuilder LiveXP InRam (same difference - mine pegs out with "basic useful stuff" needing 512mb.)

Maybe it already exists.

http://reboot.pro/topic/15252-picoxp/

Maybe you can make a "real" XP in 40 or 20 Mb or less:

http://reboot.pro/topic/3717-xpsp1-with-full-commandline-and-ntfs-below-10-mb/

http://minixp.reboot.pro/docs/files/index.html

jaclaz

P.S.: Almost forgot :

AND:

Edited June 27, 2013 by jaclaz

[submix8c]

(Heh...) Never said they don't exist. DSL/MDS-XP in both cases.

Still, the OP states they are "well on the way" without any explanations of hardware/procedures.

For anyone finding this thread, hope it helps even without this particular specifics.

(nice GIF... insert after second paragraph above)

more here -

Edited June 27, 2013 by submix8c