New Rig, Motherboard with old XP drive... NTLDR Missing errors...

H

HybReD1234

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
177
Well I just finished building my new rig a few hours ago. I didn't purchase a new HD because I figured I'd drag over my old 250GB WD that was split into 3 Partitions and leave my second HD which is IDE on the old PC and maybe reformat it later for other uses. So as I was dual booting a week ago I figured it would let me just split the two and each would work on their own. Yeah... if only.

The SATA WD: 1 Blank 15GB, a 20GB OS [XP SP2], and the rest was games & movies etc.

The IDE: 40GB with just the original OS and some random crap on it. It's old and useless and loud.

Anyway, after setting everything up I swapped hard drives and booted up all excited.... NTLDR is missing CTRL/ALT/DEL out. ...Crap. So I tried going back and forth and seeing what the problem is and if I had to take a blind guess... The SATA is relying on the IDE drive in order to boot. It boots fine on the OLD PC with both of them in. Without the IDE it get's an NTLDR error. So.... yeah. I reformatted the 250GB OS partition and reinstalled a fresh windows on it on the OLD PC [because for some reason I can't get either optical drive to boot up the windows CD on the new PC] and tried it again. Same error. I'm not reformatting the entire 250GB drive because I need the information on the big partition.

Another thing I tried was removing the prior installation of XP Home from the boot.ini to see if that was the issue. Didn't work either.

So I'm clueless as to what to do. I do not want to use the IDE Drive as anything permanent in this new computer. It's loud and useless. If I have to reformat it to do what's needed, temporarily in the NEW PC, fine. But I'd like to just run a new XP off the 3rd partition on the single 250GB drive and add in more drives as I need them.

So, any ideas on how to fix this? :| Is there maybe a way to switch masters so that the IDE drive relies on the SATA to boot into it's OS? Because at this point I'd be cool with just drop kicking the 40GB into a trash can and buying a new one if I decide to do something with it. The drive letter on the IDE for the OS is C:\ and the new partition installation I just finished on the 250GB is F:\

NTLDR errors are the only windows error that fucking get me everytime. I've spent 3+ hours now trying different crap and I've come to the conclusion that a] Doing what I'm trying to do is a BITCH from hell and b] Never buy a new rig without some sort of blank drive laying around.

And if it matters my new Motherboard is a Gigabyte P35-DS3L

thanks.
 
new motherboard may not like old motherboard chipset drivers and verious other os components as they are installed maybe others will chime in with more information.peace

ps watch language in topic opening
 
you'll need to re-install XP, sounds like.

you can possibly do a "repair" under the XP install, which will keep your files (and some of your settings) and just dump you into a nice fresh install.

also, check your bios boot drive -- make sure it's trying to boot off the ATA drive, not the SATA one. Hell, just unplug the dang sata drive to make sure it's not trying to boot off it.

[if I understood your post correctly! :)]
 
pls dont swear in titles!

To prevent the problem you have occuring again, install each windows on a separate drive with no other drives plugged in.
This way each copy of Windows will boot with the installation drive as C: and the different OS's and drives will be completely independant of each other.
Once installed plug all the drives back in and change which drive you want to boot from in the CMOS.

I've used this method for years and it works wonderfully.
Be very sure that when you install Windows, you ONLY have the drive you are installing to connected.

If another drive is present and is already labelled Drive C:, it often makes your new Windows installation use another drive letter which can get messy later.
I've also had situations where Windows has become confused and used Program Files from one drive and Windows folder from the other after putting a fresh windows on another drive while my original was still plugged in.
Each time this has happened to me, it has hosed both installs of Windows and will only work when both drives are present. It made a nice mess.
 
In your case I would start from scratch and not make the same mistake again.
As you pointed out, you have spent hours trying to get it to work and would have spent much less time re-installing and be guaranteed not to have further issues.
 
I figured it out. I just installed a fresh XP on the SATA drive on the OLD PC with the IDE Drive out.

It's stupid that both my ASUS Lightscribe DVDR & Samsung DVDR are both fubared. ASUS won't even open and the Samsung's disc motor or something is broken and doesn't spin discs.
 
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