system drive AND boot drive???

R

rocketkidd777

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Mar 22, 2008
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Just installed a system on my new SATA 250GB WD. My system also has a 40 gig hard drive from my old system with 18 gigs of pictures on it. After the install of xp, my 250 gig was labeled as "K" drive. meaning the drive with xp on it is the boot drive, while the old 40 gig is the "C" drive, and is labeled as the system drive.

After installing xp pro, I pulled the 40 gig and tried to boot. BIOS immediately gave me "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". I'll add that the 40 gig doesnt have any new files or hidden files that I don't recognize. It is just a hard drive for pictures.

I was soo confused... I put the 40 gig back in, and sure enough she booted right up.

I tried to change the drive letters in windows disk management and it said I couldn't do that.

Screen01.jpg


The 40 gig is loud, old, and I didn't plan on keeping it much over 2 weeks in my system. Now im relying on it for boot apparently.

Any way to resolve this without wiping my 250 gig clean?

Thanks in advance!!!
 
Windows setup added the boot info on the 40GB drive. I am assuming that the 40GB drive is an IDE and the 250 is SATA. Windows setup likes to put boot info on the first hard drive. BIOS always reports the master IDE has the first hard drive.

The only way to fix this that I know of is to take the 40GB out and reinstall windows or repair windows. You can get to the recovery console in XP setup and type "fix mbr" and "fix boot". That might help. If it still will not boot, then you have to reinstall Windows.
 
fixboot couldnt even find a boot record to fix, and fixmbr seemed to work till it tried to reboot. I'm writing this on my new install with a 250 gig "C" drive. not the &%*^ "K" drive lol.

Thanks for the ideas!!
 
Get yourself a Dos boot disk, and boot up with just the new drive installed. Run fdisk, and make sure the first partition on the drive is set as an active partition.

This article may be helpful for you also. 10 ways to fix non booting Windows.

I have had similar problems in the past, so now I only have 1 drive in a system when I install Windoz. It just saves on hassles.

Don
 
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