HELP! winxp boot problems

[jdustinb]

ok, this may get a bit confusing but i'll do my best to expain. thanks in advance for any help.

Machine specs shouldn't be all that relevant.

I have two hard drives, say MAIN and BACK. MAIN is a 20gig hd and has WinXP Pro installed and boots fine by itself. BACK has several files that I do not want to lose and is 120gigs. I want BACK to become the master hd and retire MAIN to another machine.

In doing so, I installed WinXP Pro on BACK upon boot up. I did not delete the current partition that existed on BACK, though it did not have any system files or any OS installed on it already. After installing, it appears that ntldr, boot.ini, and netdetect.com are present on BACK. When trying to boot with BACK as the only available hd, it wouldn't boot. POSTed fine and everything. Right when the OS would typically launch, it would say unable to boot, please enter disc and press enter. It does this everytime, however if I put MAIN back in as the master and BACK as the slave, I can boot, where it gives me the option of which os to use, WinXP or WinXP. The first option is the newly installed OS on BACK and I'm able to use it in this case. This leads me to believe that something is wrong with the boot properties of BACK. Any ideas anyone? I basically only want BACK in my computer as the master but I do NOT want to lose my files that I have on there. Unfortunately I don't have another hd that I can transfer the files over to that is large enough. PLEASE HELP!!!

jdustinb

 

[Green Man]

Did you install Xp on 'BACK' with 'MAIN' still in the system?

 

[jdustinb]

I might have. Had I been thinking, I probably would have removed it first before the reboot and install. Any idea around the dilema I put myself into? I would rather not re-install on BACK again, but I suppose I can if that's my last option.

 

[Green Man]

Windows has a bad habit of installing the system files like ntldr.exe, boot.ini, and ntdetect.com on the C: drive, whether you want them there or not. The easiest thing to do will be to pull 'MAIN' out of there and reinstall. Make sure you point the install to the same folder as the previous install. It's in \WINDOWS by default in XP.

 

[jdustinb]

cool. i was hoping there would be a quicker fix, like editing the boot.ini file, but upon looking at it, it looked fine. if you have any other ideas on how to go about fixing this little problem aside from pulling MAIN and doing a complete install on BACK, please let me know.

I'm a bit concerned though that when I formatted BACK last, I didn't do format d:\ -s to have start up properties whereas I did with MAIN. Any idea if this may have to do with it? Basically, I don't want to pull MAIN, do a clean install on BACK and have the same start-up problem. In fact, I think I may have already tried re-installing onto BACK with only BACK available.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[jdustinb]

re-installed without MAIN, same problem still...

 

[jdustinb]

ok, so I re-installed without MAIN and to no avail.

I even tried copying ntldr, netdetect.com, and boot.ini over from MAIN as it boots fine. i tried using FIXBOOT to wipe the boot.ini clean, adding only BACK. Still no luck. Anyone have any clues why I'm unable to boot with BACK as the master and only available hd with a new installation of WinXP Pro? Looking at the boot.ini file looked fine. All properties seemed right.

help, please.

 

[joejoesan]

Did you set your BACK drive as the PRIMARY partition and "Active", and also the "MASTER" ?

 

[jdustinb]

I tried BACK on with both master/slave settings with the cable and the dip switch on the drive. The drive was already active, but how can I check to make sure it is though? As for Primary, there is only one partition on the drive itself and beings that I tried it without MAIN available or attached, BACK would have to be the primary drive. Again though, how can I check to make sure that BACK is set as the primary drive?

thanks, jd

 

[joejoesan]

I'm not sure, since it's been awhile...

You'll need to do a Format. During the format process, you can enable/choose/switch the partitions between Primary/Extended, Active, etc. I don't think you need to go through with the actual formatting itself in order to have this done. I think all you need to do is make the changes and then exit the Format process. Maybe others have a better recollection of this process. Sorry if I could not be more informative.

 

[WarCon]

Originally posted by: jdustinb
I tried BACK on with both master/slave settings with the cable and the dip switch on the drive. The drive was already active, but how can I check to make sure it is though? As for Primary, there is only one partition on the drive itself and beings that I tried it without MAIN available or attached, BACK would have to be the primary drive. Again though, how can I check to make sure that BACK is set as the primary drive?

thanks, jd

Are you sure that the partition on that drive is active? Put your other drive back in to boot on and read up on the diskpart command.