Boot drives messed up

[Azndude51]

I recently installed a new hard drive. I now have 1 IDE drive, 2 SATA drives connected to a MSI neo2 platinum S939 (nforce3). My boot drive is one of the SATA ones, but everytime I start/restart the computer, I get an error saying that NTLDR is missing or something. If I start and press F11 and get into the boot menu, I can manually select my boot drive, otherwise windows won't start. How can I fix it so that the correct drive boots first every time?

 

[Bozo Galora]

you didnt say which drive you added or which drive has O/S, or how many O/S
anyway hidden file boot.ini has to represent current boot/HDD partition configuration
also IDE (primary) takes precedent over SATA (primary) in allocation of drive letters

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q289022/

Edit:
You can change drive letters in disk manager, but not O/S related
http://www.dougknox.com/tips/xp_drive_letters.htm
this will allow O/S letter changes but is a bit more dangerous
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188
but you cant boot normally anyway

As last option could try repair install of XP, however you would lose all XP settings (but no data/apps)

If you want to start from scratch is to make 5GB primary/active partition on IDE "C" and put O/S on that, then add 2 SATA after.

 

[unmerited]

If F11 allows you to choose the boot device, try rearranging the boot order in BIOS.


unmerited