switching IDE drives on boot up (Q)

[the lone gunman]

Ok im still a noob when it come to moding / upgrading ect... so im not sure if this can be done so here go's... I have 2 HDD's both in the same PC:
1 maxtor 80G
1 WD 80G

the maxtor has Win XP pro and the WD has Win ME, the WD is the slave and maxtor the master.

now for my question. Is there a way to choose which drive i want to load when the PC is booting up? its just a pain in the A$$ removeing the master IDE so i can load ME on my slave.

Oh yes i have my reasons for still wanting to keep Win ME

cheers

_____________________
I'm not as think as you drunk i am

 

[BillLeeLee]

Depending on your BIOS, there is an option for hard drive boot priority, so you can choose what order to boot your hard drives in.

And a reason to keep WinME? I don't think 'getting frustrated' is a good reason.

 

[feigned]

http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2337

Booting DOS or Windows 9x-Me

Configuring the BOOT.INI file to allow you to boot to DOS or Windows 95-Me is done automatically by the setup program if, when you install Windows NT-2003 including XP, you choose to leave your current filesystem intact (it must be a FAT-16 or FAT-32 partition) and install the new operating system in a different directory or on a different disk drive (which could be NTFS).

If you want to add DOS/95/98/Me to an existing NT-2003 installation, it is easier to do so by adding a second hard drive setup with a FAT-16 or FAT-32 filesystem and modifying the BOOT.INI file to provide the option to boot to the second drive. The steps in a nutshell are:

1.

Disconnect the first hard drive that contains Windows NT-2003.
2.

Connect the drive you want to use for DOS-Me as the first/only hard drive.
3.

Install DOS or Windows 95-Me.
4.

Reconfigure the hard drives so that the Windows NT-2003 drive is the first/"Master" drive and the DOS-Me drive is the second/"Slave" drive.
5.

Boot into Windows NT-2003.
6.

Modify the BOOT.INI file on the second drive to look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000"
d:\="Windows 98"

The line containing d:\="Windows 98" provides the boot-time option and operating system location reference for the operating system on the second drive.

Basically you'll just have to edit the boot.ini file to get it to work.

Aside from that, WinMe sucks and has absolutely no use for...anything. Please enlighten us as to why you would even want to consider it useful...and we'll tell you why you're crazy (and even offer up solutions!)

 

[the lone gunman]

yea, i tryed that but it's still a chore to got through the BIOS just to boot another drive. its just easyer to to remove the site window and switch cables.

perhaps there is some kind of IDE switch?

Oh the ME thing... some of my older games dont run on XP coz i cannot find patches for them

 

[the lone gunman]

See above for the ME thing. as for the solution to my drive question, thanks for the very indepth answer but i think i need to lern more before i even atempt to try those methods

thought it may have been easyer than that lol

 

[the lone gunman]

ok im starting to understand a little after much thought but i could do with knowing were the BOOT.INI file is located