Win ME install from H-E-doubleL

Question

Problem:  While preparing to upgrade to XP, I can't get a Pentium II machine to boot from anything but the hard drive.  Wait until you see all I have tried!   This is a Pentium II - 450 MHz - 192MB SDRAM built in late 1998. I'm trying to get it upgraded to XP so that it can be used by a family of evacuees from Katrina as they attempt to rebuild their lives from afar.   The mobo is of the 440BX/ZX family with chipset 82443.  On the Primary IDE 0 Master sits a 10GB IBM-DTTA-351010, FAT32.  It has a Creative CD-RW RW8438E.   The first thing I did was make the boot order:  (1) floppy (2) CD-RW (3) hard drive.   Inserted install CD for Win XP.  Nope.  It went ahead and booted from the hard drive, which has Win ME as its OS.   By the way, the CD-RW is fully functional.  As is the floppy drive and functionality ...   So I figure the CD-RW doesn't support 'bootability' for whatever reason.  Next: I made a bootable floppy which can then be used to direct the follow-up boot process to the CD-RW.  Tried it on a 'good' machine -- it worked on that machine.  Tried it on this stubborn 450 MHz machine ... nope, it again booted from the hard drive.   So then I figured that this older floppy might not and probably does not read Windows NT-style floppy formats.  Went out and bought some pre-formatted IBM floppies.  Repeated whole process.  Nope, still wants to boot from the old hard drive ...   Put in a different CD - my trusty 'Ultimate Bootable CD for Windows' ... ERASED THE HARD DRIVE COMPLETELY -- as I have done with many other machines using that the same CD.  It wipes clean over a period of more than an hour.    Start the machine again ... {scream} it boots from the hard drive again!  Win ME greets me once more.  So the reformat of the hard drive was a waste of time.  The only result of this hard drive wipe clean was that the keyboard won't now work in BIOS.  (But works in the Windows environment.)  I eventually got the keyboard working again by taking out the 3v battery from the motherboard and resetting CMOS.   I even tried booting after physically removing the wire connection to the hard drive.  But it won't boot from either the floppy or the CD in even that case.  It just gives a 'No Operating System found' error and stops.   I'm pretty much at my wits end.  I tried some other bootable CDs for Win 98 systems, and nothing will work.  Next I am going to try to flash the BIOS through the floppy drive.   Can anyone tell me how I can get this stubborn hard drive either erased or respond to bootability?  Thanks!

Mary G · Answer

Is the cd drive the master drive on the cable? Make sure you don't have another drive--another cd, dvd, zip, the hard drive etc. on the same cable & set as as the Master drive. To boot from the cd it must be the master, on the end of the IDE cable. The other problem is the keyboard. Make sure it's a PS2 keyboard and not USB. Some older computers/bios won't recognize usb keyboards during boot, so 'Press any key to boot from cd' doesn't work. I've installed xp on a PII 400 Dell and it worked fine, but it needed upgraded hard drive, more memory to run xp. Why don't you just install ME and leave it at that?

graffen · Answer

Is the cd drive the master drive on the cable? Make sure you don't have another drive--another cd, dvd, zip, the hard drive etc. on the same cable & set as as the Master drive. To boot from the cd it must be the master, on the end of the IDE cable.

>>>>>>> I will check this evening for that. This may in fact be the problem, because I think I remember Sandra SiSoft 2002 reporting that the hard drive is IDE0 and set as the Master. In any case, I will need both the CD and the hard drive operational in order to implement the install of XP. Supposing that I can indeed do as you described and put the CD drive on the end of the IDE cable, where should I hook the hard drive to? Thank you.

The other problem is the keyboard. Make sure it's a PS2 keyboard and not USB. Some older computers/bios won't recognize usb keyboards during boot, so 'Press any key to boot from cd' doesn't work.

>>>>>>> The problem with the keyboard is fixed. I tried two keyboards (both PS2) and neither would work in the BIOS environment, yet both would work fine in the Windows ME environment. I fixed this by removing the 3v battery from the motherboard and forcing it to reset its 'look for legacy' device.

I've installed xp on a PII 400 Dell and it worked fine, but it needed upgraded hard drive, more memory to run xp. Why don't you just install ME and leave it at that?

>>>>>>>> The original owner who is donating the machine for the hurricane evacuee family doesn't have the Win ME install CD. I do happen to have a beautiful free Win XP install CD sent to me directly from Microsoft in 2004. I've used it many times to upgrade to XP on older mobo systems where the system has the minimum requirements of 233 Mhz mobo, ~6 GB hard drive, and 128MB RAM. This particular machine has 192MB RAM. The old ME install is gummed up badly.

graffen · Answer

Mary,

Thanks so much for your help. It took some playing, but I managed to disconnect all drives and reconfigure the IDE boot and CMOS as you described. I'm very happy that XP is installing right now.

Thanks again,

Graffen

Windows General

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