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xp boot drive issue

H

hoppa

Senior member
I recently reinstalled XP on my primary drive, D, but for some reason it put all the boot files (ntldr, config.sys, etc) on E. I'm worried that E is on it's last limbs, so I've just replaced it and have moved all the files over to a new drive, but when I unplug E from the system, I can't boot XP from any of my drives. I put ntldr and such files on all 3 of my system partitions but nothing would boot.

What do I do? I'd like to just have those boot files on my primary: D.
 
Any ideas yet?

I've booted to the recovery console with the intent of doing a fixmbr/fixboot on d, but I don't think the drive has a boot sector at all at the moment because it's giving me a warning that I might lose data. That obviously is unacceptable, so I did a fixmbr/fixboot on the new E instead (with old E unplugged). I got no errors from that, but I still can't boot from it. I've also tried bootcfg /scan, but that returns an error that says it couldn't complete scanning, that the disk may have errors, and to do chkdsk. The disk has always had a single bad sector, and still does, but I can't imagine that is screwing anything up. I can still boot from the old E if I plug it in, so I don't think there are any real disc errors here.

Help?
 
When you say you have copied all the files, what files are those?
Have you also copied boot.ini?

You should and you need to edit it and make sure that it points to the intended partition as the boot/system partition. The syntax may seem strange. But, it is simple. The disk is specified by the disk number and the partition is specified by the partition number on the specified disk.

After you do that, you need to change the active partition to be D. You should be able to do that from Disk manager.

Finally, you may need to restore MBR on the new active partition.

It is always a good idea to backup your irreplaceable files.
 
Indeed, I copied over boot.ini, and I updated the necessary lines. I backed up, too 😉 The only part I didn't do was change the active partition. Should I change it to D and risk screwing stuff up when adding an MBR? Or should I change it to the new E, which is mostly empty right now? I don't really care about having the boot on a seperate drive, as I'll likely not be removing it for a good while.
 
OK you lost me. So many D's and E's!

Can you re-install XP or is that what you are trying to avoid?

Because, that would solve everything as long as you disconnect all your hard drives except the one you want to install XP on. Then, when you install, everything will be placed on C, which by the way, is the most appropriate drive letter for the system/boot partition (as long as you install on the first partition). And MBR will be created and all the files that you need and the partition will be active.
 
Indeed, but I am at risk of data-loss, which, although everything is backed up, would be a huge pain. Even more of a pain would be having to reinstall OS after I just reinstalled a few weeks ago.

I'm gonna go for putting it on the new drive and seeing what happens. Thanks for the help.
 
Alright, I put E as the active drive, but when I boot from it, it's now telling hal.dll is missing. One step closer, but still not quite there. I did another fixmbr and fixboot on it but that didn't fix anything.

Where is this hal.dll ?


btw, BOOTCFG /scan still gives me an error.
 
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