Hardisk Problem, NEED HELP!?!!

[Panorama]

OK, i have intsalled two hardrive one SATA Maxtor Diamond 10 300GB with 3 partitions. The other one is ATA Seagate 120 GB with 5 Partitions. Both these HD's have Win xp pro installed. As i shutdown (power off) my computer my SATA hard drive doesnt get detected in BIOS, if i restart my computer it works fine. I have some other problems while booting to windows is NTLDR missing, hal.dll missing. Whats the solution to this damn prob.... do i have to modify boot.ini or i have to only install one windows on any HD's. I dont think that there is anything wrong with hard disk physically, i just got my maxtor few weeks ago! I am f++king overwhelmed....i spent my whole day formatting and reinstalling and got nothing...neeed feedback, your comments are appreciated!

 

[Panorama]

this is how my boot.ini looks
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

the two windows are on seperate HD's

 

[Bozo Galora]

basically, you are trying to dual boot two exact same O/S acrss two HDD and two controller chips (IDE/SATA)
and the reason is??

Personally, I would a make two O/S parts of 4500MB ea. which would format as 4200MB - just right to be backup up to a single DVD ea.
Then I would decide which drive I wanted as O/S drive, and do all install THERE first, while other is unplugged from power, that would make "C" and "D" drive on the IDE or SATA choice.

In your situation, you would at least have to have SATA drivers loaded to both IDE and SATA for beginners. Also the boot order in BIOS might need to be synched with O/S default choice by XP bootloader. (NTloader) as shown in boot.ini. I think thats why you are getting no execute option. Also if these HDD were ever used before, MBR's must be cleared.

You might also try in XP repair console from F8 options at post FIXBOOT, FIXMBR and bootcfg entries
You could also use a repair reinstall from CD - but then if you fixed one it might screw up the other - lol.

ntldr ntdetect boot.ini and hal (hardware abstraction layer) probs ultimately will mean a non bootable PC with a blinking cursor on a black screen.

 

[Panorama]

Well i have refunded my Sata Maxtor HD to newegg because i did almost everything to make it work, it didnt show up in Bios and i even spoke to senior maxtor supervisor and he couldn't even resolve the problem. So my next question is pretty obvious, Should go for Maxtor Diamond 10 Sata again or should try some other brand like Western Digital or Seagate?