[jeffh1234]

I am having problems changing operating systems from Linspire 5.0 to Windows ME. does anyone know how to do that?

[jiml8]

Sure. What is it you want to do? Dual boot? Blow off Linux and install ME (though why anyone would choose to install ME on anything is beyond me)?

Be specific in what you want and we can certainly show you how to do it. Saying "I'm having problems..." is completely useless.

[jeffh1234]

either one will do. would like dual boot

[jiml8]

To dual boot, it is usually easier to install Windows first. Linux will cheerfully dual boot with windows and when you install a linux distro it finds the windows installation and accommodates it.

Windows, OTOH, isn't so friendly. If you install Windows second, you will then have to manually install a bootloader to do the dual boot. Are you up to this? if not, blow off Linux, then install Windows ME, then come back and reinstall Linux.

You need to partition the drive to accommodate this. One partition FAT for Windows and at least two partitions for Linux. How big is your HD?

[jeffh1234]

I can't figure out how to blow off Linspire though

[jeffh1234]

the hard drive is 40 gig, 2.8 ghz, 256 meg

[CouchMaster]

I've never installed Linspire but if it's like most Linux systems it will shrink the windows partition and make room for itself.
Therefore use the ME boot floppy to format the HD and install Windows. Then boot with Linux and install it - telling it how much HD space to use, and it will do the rest.

[jeffh1234]

Try using boot disk and I get error saying wrong boot device???

[CouchMaster]

Make sure the floppy drive is the first boot device, and the floppy disk could be bad - you can DL a new one for free at http://www.bootdisk.com

[Squashman]

Use a floppy bootdisk and run FDISK. Delete the non-dos partitions. You also need to fix the master boot record. So run this command at a dos prompt from your bootdisk.

fdisk /mbr