can't install win me!

Da Mail Man

Active Member
1st, i eventually need this os on a small partition to play some games.
with all that aside now; it is a dell 210L, 160gb 7200 hd, 247 ram (1gb coming in the morning)....

.....i formatted the entire hd and have attempted the installation of win me and after a series of typical reboots, the screen goes blank and void of any picts, text, etc.!

.....this has happened when i attempted to install into a fat32 partition when i have xp home in a separate partition on the computer. i am so burned out with this that i cannot remember clearly if i had already attempted to make the entire hd fat32 and attempted to insall win me there!... i am writing zeros to the drive as we speak and will make my 3rd attempt to install win me into the hard drive (fat32) tomorrow morning and see what happens...

....the os disc is good and no hardware conflicts as far as i can tell...can anyone tell me why win M.E. craps out every time i attempt to install in in this dell?....any help is appreciated!!
 
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In order to dual boot with XP you will have to repartition the drive and install windows ME first and then install XP. Thats the reason why computer won't load. You need to install oldest OS first and then XP. It has to do with the boot loader that XP uses to boot between the OS's. So just partition/format the drive and install ME first on first partition and then XP on second partition. But in my opinion, Dual booting with only a 16gb Hard drive isn't near enough for what you need. You can get an 80 gb for around 50 bucks these days. I would recommend gettting one and use 80 gb for OS's and older drive for data.
 
In order to dual boot with XP you will have to repartition the drive and install windows ME first and then install XP. Thats the reason why computer won't load. You need to install oldest OS first and then XP. It has to do with the boot loader that XP uses to boot between the OS's. So just partition/format the drive and install ME first on first partition and then XP on second partition. But in my opinion, Dual booting with only a 16gb Hard drive isn't near enough for what you need. You can get an 80 gb for around 50 bucks these days. I would recommend gettting one and use 80 gb for OS's and older drive for data.

....thanks for the reply....forget the dual boot thing for the mean time. i am non-knowegable about a boot loader but, have been fooling around with acronis products during the past 3 days...it is also a typo if i put 16gb hd!..ugh!...what i meant to say is that it is a 160 gb hd...

....i am gonna try and load win me tomorrow morning and see if it will load onto my 160gb hd after making it fat32...if it does, i wil partition the drive and have a 150gh+/- partition (ntfs) and attempt to load win xp home onto it...i am willing to take bets that win me will crap out again.....ugh!
 
UPDATE;
after writing zero's to the hard drive (160gb) (low level format) and partitioning it as fat32, i attempted to install win ME, and as i suspected, it would not go in. after a typical series of reboots by m.e., the screen will again go blank and again void of any text, etc.......any ideas?
 
UPDATE AGAIN;

win me didn't go in so, i reformatted the hd and attempted to install win 98se and got the same problem!...

....it would appear that this dell 210L doesn't like anything that is fat32......now, i may have to contact dell.....crap!
 
dell support $ucks!

just got off of the phone after an hour with dell. the morons have advised me that the dell 210L does not work with anything other then xp!..that seems to be ridiculous!..anyone ever heard of this before?...a computer is a computer is a computer!

....i have the complete text should anyone want to read it. in it you will see the many "cop-outs" the dell "tech" threw at me to avoid my questions. i will e-mail it to anyone.

i am unaware of how dell could lock out specific microsoft products and other software and in my instance, both win me and win 98se..
 
Well, believe it or not, most new motherboards out today are only compatible with Windows 2000 or higher.
 
...it should not be an issue here so-to-speak however, it is to run a few games on that won't run in anything else which i thought i stated in POST # 1....
 
Have you tried compatiblity mode in XP? Right click on the program that you want to run and click on properties. click compatibility tab and then change the setting for windows 98/windows ME. Hopefully it will work then.
 
...it should not be an issue here so-to-speak however, it is to run a few games on that won't run in anything else which i thought i stated in POST # 1....


Sorry I don't know how I missed it :P, anyway you would be much better off with 98 or 2000, ME is a REALLY bad OS.
 
Have you tried compatiblity mode in XP? Right click on the program that you want to run and click on properties. click compatibility tab and then change the setting for windows 98/windows ME. Hopefully it will work then.

***thanks for the reply...the program is a game and from what memory i have left, i am not sure if it even loaded properly so, i am not sure if that is feasible.....
 
WIN ME HAS BEEN INSTALLED. (WITH A PROBLEM).

...i got into the bios and enabled a setting that would allow some programs (as the explanation says it) to work with the sata hd....

....i formatted the entire disk as a fat32 and the os actually went in!......however, here is the problem;

.......i can see the "a" drive but not the dvd or the dvd/cd-rw drive at all which would make loading the drivers to make "me" work impossible....how do i get around this w/out having to restructure any existing file entries which i am totally w/ knowledge?.
 
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