XP trying to Boot from the wrong drive

[arioch]

Hi All,

I hope someone can help me with this issue. I have just had my primary HD replaced. I had backed up the old primary hard drive to the new replacement drive using Ghost 10, making sure that I back up the Master Boot Record on the C drive.

The old drive had 2 partitions on it (drives C and E). I also have a second hard drive (drive F) as a slave. However now that that disks have both been installed, my PC is trying to boot from the slave drive.

Using Norton's disk doctor, I can see that the slave drive is now listed as the C drive and the drives on the new disk are called E and F.

The jumpers are set correctly on both drives and they are correctly identified as primary and slave in IDE detection process. I have tried disabling the slave drive in the BIOS which results in the error "NTLDR is Missing". When I disconnect the power from the slave drive I get the error that a boot disk must be inserted as the OS cannot be found.

I tried opening the XP recovery console but only the partitions on the slave drive appeared to boot from (although I havent tried disabling the slave drive and using the recovery console).

When I check in Norton Disk Doctor, everything is fine with both drives (ie not errors) and I can see the boot partition on the primary drive. I just cant get to it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Specs:

AMD 2800+
1GB 333DDR RAM
Antec SmartPower 500W PSU (new)
nVidia 6800 LE
1 x 120GB Seagate HD (old primary drive)
1 x 300GB Western Digital HD (new primary drive)
1 x 200GB Western Digital HD (slave drive)
Liteon DVD-RW
Pioneer DVD-RW

[TheCount]

XP does not allow to to exchange drives. It fails to boot instead.

[arioch]

XP does not allow to to exchange drives. It fails to boot instead.

I am not sure what you mean by that? Do you mean that you cant replace a drive under XP or that you cant change the HD drive letters under XP (both of which I am sure you can do, although it is a bit more tricky to change the drive letters as they are assigned in the boot process by the BIOS).

If I have Ghosted the contents of the "old" drive to the new drive and set the new drive as the Master, I didnt think that XP would know that the old drive had been removed.

[J0K3R]

if i had the time id google for a utility boot cd for you but i dont ,, your going to have to set the xp partiton as the active partition. my xp install is loaded to F: drive and it boots fine and its the only OS installed on the box

[arioch]

I am going to try disconnecting the slave drive and using the Windows XP repair function. I was thinking about using the bootcfg command to locate any bootable OS installations.

If that doesnt work (perhaps Ghost didnt do what it was supposed to), I will try doing an XP installation over the existing installation.

[J0K3R]

it just needs to be the active partition thats all

[arioch]

I may have made a bad situation worse last night. I couldnt find any active partition to boot from and using Norton Disk Doctor, found partition errors on the drive.

I ended up formatting the drive but I am still getting partition errors (there were 2 partitions of equal size on the drive and now I only see one partition that takes up half the drive). When I try to reinstall XP, the process completes but will not boot.

Now I just want to get my PC back up and running. All I can think to do is to try and reinstall XP so that i can open the recovery console and delete the existing partition and let windows recreate them.

Any thoughts? I think I am going insane.

[GX1_Man]

Back up any important data left on there, then delete ALL partitions and start over with a fresh install that includeds formatting the drive.  

[arioch]

Back up any important data left on there, then delete ALL partitions and start over with a fresh install that includeds formatting the drive.  

Thanks. Not to doubt your word, but can I clarify a couple of things (once i leave work for the day, I dont have any web access so I cant come back and ask more questions till tomorrow):

1. Do I need to create a new Master Boot Record or will the XP installation do this for me?
2. Will the removal of the partition remove the errors I am experiencing (Norton says that they are partition errors only - the disk surface etc is OK)?
3. Is it possible that I could make the drive unusable if these problems persist?

Thanks - yours in paranoia.

[GX1_Man]

1. A new MBR will be created.

2. Hopefully all will be OK. You will know when you reinstall and you can run scandisk afterward. You can also test the hard drive with free diagnostic software from the manufacturer's website.

3.  If the hardware is bad, you cannot make it worse.