Tetrium wrote:

Does this have something to do with that little hidden 8MB partition XP always creates?

I have no idea what you're talking about here.

I suspect the problem is the boot record, which WinImage would not retrieve from your virtual hard drive. If I'm not mistaken, if you take an ME rescue disk and run "fdisk /mbr" (i.e. with the ME version of fdisk) on the hard drive you set up with XP, that should fix it.

But I don't know if copying an ME install straight from a Virtual PC hard drive is such a good idea. The installation is going to have drivers set up for Virtual PC's emulated hardware; if your physical machines are sufficiently different, it might not work at all.

Anyway, if you want to do it that way, why don't you just run some hard drive imaging program within Virtual PC, and re-clone the resulting image onto your physical machine?

Run SYS C: from a Windows ME bootdisk.

Of course. That would do it too. (A much better idea, rather.)

Thanks for the suggestions you 2!!!! 😁 😁 😁
I've been breaking my head over this problem! I tried more experiments but the result was always the same, no bootdisk. I'll try your 2 suggestions and report back later with the results 😉

the reason why you get that is because the MBR is looking for NTLDR, which no longer exists because you changed the active partition and it's on your other partition

you need NT loader to dual boot... so google info on making NT4 and 98 coexist... there's tons of info on this out there, and the methods to modify NT loader to let you do that is exactly the same with ME/XP.... your active partition must not be changed, but modify boot.ini to make references to your ME partition so that it can boot from it... the partition must still be bootable but NOT active

if you do a sys c: or fdisk/mbr in DOS 7.1, it will wipe any references to NTLDR and you won't be able to dual boot

I'm not trying to create a dualboot, but thanks for the info.

What I'm trying to do is basically this:
Slave a drive with a complete ME install and copy all of it to a folder. Copy the content of that folder to another harddisk and hope I get a cloned fully working ME install.
The problem I've been having is that it won't boot correctly. I'll try the posted suggestions tomorrow when it is light again (and I'm not tired while swapping cables around == bad thing).

go here:
http://www.partition-saving.com/

of many hdd makers provide tools for cloning a hard drive
for example seagate (its a rebranded version of Acronis True Image)
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale= … 000dd04090aRCRD

maxtor maxblast version 3 should support win9x
http://www.pcsupport.dk/software/MaxBlast3Boo … OImageFile.html

more tools here (make sure they support win9x /fat32
http://www.wareprise.com/2008/06/24/free-nort … t-alternatives/

or search for norton ghost alternatives

Tetrium wrote:

I'm not trying to create a dualboot, but thanks for the info. […]
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I'm not trying to create a dualboot, but thanks for the info.

What I'm trying to do is basically this:
Slave a drive with a complete ME install and copy all of it to a folder. Copy the content of that folder to another harddisk and hope I get a cloned fully working ME install.
The problem I've been having is that it won't boot correctly. I'll try the posted suggestions tomorrow when it is light again (and I'm not tired while swapping cables around == bad thing).

then what you should've simply done was make a boot floppy with ME and boot into it and partition/format all the shit you need, not do it with XP

XP is not reliable for creating proper FAT partitions, and using it to mark them as active results in writing a NT MBR instead of the DOS ones you need

Tetrium: copy the shit you need to copy and do it to an external harddisk. And then get Partition Magic or some other program to partition the drive , or if you can not find Partition Magic, then use Parted Magic to do your bidding.

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

Jesus Christ it is pretty/piss easy to get the shit done.

TheMAN wrote:

then what you should've simply done was make a boot floppy with ME and boot into it and partition/format all the shit you need, not do it with XP

Indeed.

XP is not reliable for creating proper FAT partitions

How so? The only problem I am aware of is the arbitrary 32 GB restriction.

TheMAN wrote:

and using it to mark them as active results in writing a NT MBR instead of the DOS ones you need

Usually "marking as active" involves nothing more than changing one flag in the partition table, but then I've never tried to alter partitions from XP's setup and it wouldn't surprise me if it did something crazy like that.

TheMAN wrote:

then what you should've simply done was make a boot floppy with ME and boot into it and partition/format all the shit you need, not do it with XP

XP is not reliable for creating proper FAT partitions, and using it to mark them as active results in writing a NT MBR instead of the DOS ones you need

I tried using a boot floppy. I used XP as it can do it quicker. I will try the suggestions posted in the beginning at first, I just woke up and am tired 🤣

WolverineDK wrote:

Tetrium: copy the shit you need to copy and do it to an external harddisk. And then get Partition Magic or some other program to partition the drive , or if you can not find Partition Magic, then use Parted Magic to do your bidding.

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

Jesus Christ it is pretty/piss easy to get the shit done.

I'm kinda trying to do it manually, as it gives me the most control. If this works, it'll make setting up ME rigs very easy 😉
...if it works, L O L

Good luck Tetrium

WolverineDK wrote:

Good luck Tetrium

Lol 😜

I just got home, haven't had a chance to mess with anything, except one of my other rigs. Was messing with getting the cooling more quiet and more effective and succeeded in a weird way.

When I know more, I'll post about it here 😉

Edit:Btw, I did download the acronis clone clone tool 😉

AFAIR, if you change the MB chipset - you MUST fully reinstall ME. IIRC, even Xp don't like the chipset change. So - 99% chance for the "simple cloning" to fail.

Always worth trying things out another way. That's where you learn the most, even if you fail.

For cloning I swear by Acronis True Image. Pretty much all HDD companies have a free download. I believe they will check what HDD you have installed. So if you have the Acronis from WD, it will look for a WD drive (at least 1 in the machine).

Acronis can clone / image onto USB storage as well. Very handy if you don't want to open the case. It can also burn on DVDs, which should work well with these older / smaller Windows installations.

Success!!
Sys c: did the trick, after a reboot it booted right into the ME's new hardware wizard and after a couple reboots I reached the desktop!!

However, when I booted the second drive (I was testing 2 identical drives so I could test quicker) I was greeted with a BSoD at some point. I don't remember what I did exactly with which version of format and fdisk to which drive, but at least now I know that it can work!

The summary:
I installed ME in VPC, copied everything to a folder with the help of WinImage, then copied the content of that folder (to keep the root directory intact) to a harddrive I quickformatted and fdisked in XP Pro (or using the EBD, can't remember), connected the harddrive to the new motherboard, booted from the EBD and typed "sys c:", rebooted and booted from ME where it went through the new hardware wizard and finally reached the desktop.

But I still got some bugs to iron out I suppose, I need to be able to reproduce it next...tomorrow. Now it's late 🤣. But at least I know it actually works! 😁

While facing impeding defeat at the hands of my cloning experiments, I decided to sidetrack and investigate the matters of msbatch.inf.
A useful file, it allows the setup of 9x to be automated, much like nlite does for XP.
However, the program that creates msbatch.inf files officially ended support with 98FE. ME is not supported and it won't really work correctly.
All in all, there was a shortage of info about how to proceed to use msbatch.inf for ME.
In the end I combined 3 files (setuplog.txt, msbatch.inf created by collecting data on the VPC ME install and an unattended msbatch.inf for ME I found on the web) to create my own customised settings for an unattended ME install.

According to the info on the web, the msbatch.inf file is supposed to be copied, along with the entire 9x directory of the install disk, to the harddrive for this to work.
This is not true! I have a strange ME disk which actually has msbatch.inf in the 9x directory directly on the disk itself.
That msbatch.inf only has a product key and it works, when I install ME using that disk, it never asks me for a product key.

So what I did was this:I extracted the content of that entire ME CD to harddisk, replaced the original msbatch.inf with my custom made one, created a (non-bootable) ISO and installed it in VPC. It worked, I never had to click any button except for 2 instances:
1)It asks me for a computer name, which is intentional or all computers will end up with the same name which I find annoying
2)There was one error about command.com having too many parameters. I clicked it away and the install continued.
3-maybe)After setup had completed, I had to watch the entire ME intro movie as I couldn't use the mouse till I hit the desktop! -_-

All in all, it was a lot of notepad work, lots of frustrating moments but in the end the result was somewhat perfect? 😜

Edit:I attached the msbatch.inf (had to rename it to msbatch.txt) for reference. This file will work with ME, though I'm not absolutely sure it will work with all versions.
For anyone interested, feel free to download and have a look at the file yourself 😉
If anyone happens to spot why command.com complained about too many parameters, feel free to tell me, I'm not really a DOS guru myself.

Btw, I did *-out the product key, you'll need to use your own 😜 or chances are you're key isn't accepted as retail uses different keys from OEM versions