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Old March 8th 09, 10:32 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.setup
Mike M
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,047
Default WinME goes into perpetual loop upon attempt to install

Win Me cannot handle drives larger than 137GB as it doesn't support 48 bit
LBA addressing. You might have more success if you were to partition your
hard drive in such a way that the FAT32 partition is before the 240GB
Vista partition rather than after it. Similarly if the drives are SATA
rather than PATA Win Me may not be able to access them correctly unless
you can find Win Me compatible motherboard drivers.
--
Mike Maltby



CookyMonzta u50174@uwe wrote:

I have a 1.8GHz Pentium Dual-Core machine with 2GB RAM and two hard
drives (each 320GB). The partitions (created with Acronis Disk
Director 10) are configured as follows:

Drive 0
C: 240GB NTFS, Vista installed
J: 80GB FAT32, empty but reserved for WinME (this partition was set
to active before attempting to install WinME)

Drive 1
D: 160GB NTFS, empty but reserved for XP
K: 40GB FAT32, empty but reserved for Linux
(120GB, Acronis Secure Zone)

My DVD drive is labeled E and I have a floppy drive.

Since neither my machine nor Acronis OS Selector could detect my
Windows ME (full version) CD upon restart, I created a WinME boot
disk (thanks to
www.bootdisk.com) that would access both my partition
intended for WinME and my DVD drive. The partition was designated as
C, and the DVD drive R. After placing my WinME CD in the DVD drive
and typing SETUP, the operation seemed to run normally, asking me to
place a blank floppy in the floppy drive to create a boot disk, then
finishing the installation process in under 6 minutes.
After automatically restarting, I got the WinME logo screen for a
good 2 seconds, before the screen went blank and was replaced by the
Windows Millennium Startup Menu, with the following 4 choices:

1. Normal
2. Logged
3. Safe mode
4. Step-by-step confirmation

In addition, I got the following message:

Warning: Windows did not finish loading on the previous attempt.
Choose Safe mode, to start Windows with a minimal set of drivers.

I chose 'safe mode' expecting to go into safe mode, but instead my
machine rebooted and brought up the same Windows Millennium Startup
Menu screen. I tried 'Normal', and this screen came up yet again. I
tried all 4 choices, and each time my machine booted back to the
startup menu screen, with the same message telling me that Windows
didn't finish loading. I repeated the installation process, to see
if I missed anything (I don't think I did), and still my machine
repeatedly reboots to the startup menu screen. I have to admit I
don't have much of a clue what to do with a boot disk,
but I tried using both of them (the one with the WinME files I got
from bootdisk.com, the other created by the WinME installation
process) to restore the command prompt screen. I checked the
contents of my WinME partition, and it looked normal, with nothing
out of the ordinary that I would notice. So, I typed WIN, and after
a 3-second pause, I got these messages:

Registry file was not found. Registry services may be inoperative
for this session.
XMS cache problem. Registry services may be inoperative this session.

They came up in a split-second before the screen went blank and my
machine rebooted.

When I boot back into my OS Selector screen, the WinME logo shows up
as one of my boot choices, but when I click the icon my machine
immediately goes to the Windows Millennium Startup Menu screen.

I had a 2.8GHz Celeron machine (with WinXP) before this one, and I
had no trouble booting into WinME in my attempt to create a multiboot
system. So, what have I left undone that is keeping WinME from
activating on my new machine?