Wndows fails to start after merging drives

[Iwishiknew]

hello good people, i merged 2 drives with Partition Magic to free up space for the OS but when i reboot Windows fails to start. im asked to choose how to start Windows; normal/safe mode etc. but no option starts but just loops back to the beginning again after the Windows XP welcome screen then a flash of the blue screen of death. i checked the HD on a friends laptop using an external case; it still works and the 2 drives are mergedwith all the data in tact. i was adding a HD just before this happened and had the primary HD undocked and did move the computer a little while the HD was just hanging by the cables and running. Did i kill the motherboard? what can i do? thank you for any advise. rob

[JJ 3000]

Start saving all of the data from that drive now. Trying to merge partitions that have an operating system on them rarely ever works. You best bet would be to do a clean install. If you dont want to do that, can you give us the blue screen error message?

[Allan]

Tap F8 as the system starts to boot - that will take you to a screen with startup options. Choose the one that says Do Not Restart on Error (or something close to that). You should now get the blue screen error to stay up - what EXACTLY does it say?