On 10 Jul 2006 13:57:10 -0700,
(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>Hi All!
>
>I got this strange oroblem that kinda caught me offguard.
>I used to have 2 HDs on my PC, 1st the boot (Pimary master, let's call
>it "Alfa") and 2nd dump (Primary slave let it be "Betta").
>At some point my boot HD (Alfa) was being fixed and I got another HD
>(call it "Gamma") on which I installed another copy of XP thus having a
>configuration of 1 boot HD "Gamma" (SATA 1) and the dump HD
>"Betta"(primary slave). Everything worked just fine.
>Now my old Alfa HD got back from the fix and offcause I naively
>installed it, planning to use the Gamma HD as a primary boot (it's
>larger and faster), however, strangely enough now my system recognizes
>only my old Alfa HD as a OS and disregards the newer XP install on the
>Gamma HD (the drive is there, it's assigned letter H).
>What I'd like to have is to run my new Gamma HD (SATA1) as an only OS,
>and turn the old Alfa boot (primary master) to another dump drive.
>
>My best guess is that it has something to do with the boot.ini (on
>which of the 3 physical dives I wonder...)
>
>Currently I'm running my old OS, and my boot.ini files look like this
>(why I say files... wait and see):
>The one that is on C:\ (Which corresponds to Alfa when alfa is booted))
>looks like this
>[boot loader]
>timeout=30
>default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
>[operating systems]
>multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
>Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
>
>And the one I see (when Alfa is booted)) through system->start up
>(which is for some reason on drive d:, my Betta dump drive, not the old
>boot drive) looks like this:
>[boot loader]
>timeout=15
>default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
>[operating systems]
>multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
>Professional - SATA" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
>multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
>Professional" /fastdetect
>
>Gamma drive has no boot.ini on it, even though I installed the copy of
>XP on it.
Windows XP setup places the boot files in the active primary partition
on the disk that the BIOS is set to boot from. Since the boot files
ended up on the IDE disk, either the SATA disk was not set as first
under hard disk boot priority in BIOS setup, or the BIOS is unable to
designate the SATA disk as the first disk if an IDE disk is also
connected.
>
>You can see the confusion here. 2 separate boot.ini files (kill me if I
>know which one the system uses... during the start up the one located
>on D "Betta" seems to pop, but it's second option - the one not marked
>SATA points to nowhere... nothing's there, and the 1st option still
>points to the Alfa boot device.
>
>All this is a bit confusing, so I home that someone can pinpoint the
>general idea in here and maybe give me some good advice how to fix all
>this.
>
>If any info is missing - please tell.
What motherboard are you using?
>
>Thank you.
Similar Threads
