I've just copied a system partition from a PATA drive to a SATA drive, but
can't get it to boot. I've tried FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /REBUILD from
an XP rescue disk (these all seem to work), yet the screen just goes black
after the BIOS message.

The WinXP partition did NOT have the "F6-RAID-drivers" loaded from floppy at
install time. (If this is the problem, is there any way I can install them
now without re-installing XP?)

Thanks for any suggestions...
Pete


For more complete info, this is what I did:
1) Starting with XP on PATA...
2) Plug in brand new SATA drive
3) XP recognises it. Create a partition table & a blank partition. Shutdown.
4) From a Knoppix live CD, use 'dd' to copy the FAT32 system partition from
PATA drive to SATA drive.
5) Remove PATA drive
6) Boot from XP Pro CD to a rescue prompt
7) Issue FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /RESCAN commands
8) Boot from SATA drive
9) arrrrgh, doesn't work.

Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.


"Pete" wrote:

> I've just copied a system partition from a PATA drive to a SATA drive, but
> can't get it to boot. I've tried FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /REBUILD from
> an XP rescue disk (these all seem to work), yet the screen just goes black
> after the BIOS message.
>
> The WinXP partition did NOT have the "F6-RAID-drivers" loaded from floppy at
> install time. (If this is the problem, is there any way I can install them
> now without re-installing XP?)
>
> Thanks for any suggestions...
> Pete
>
>
> For more complete info, this is what I did:
> 1) Starting with XP on PATA...
> 2) Plug in brand new SATA drive
> 3) XP recognises it. Create a partition table & a blank partition. Shutdown.
> 4) From a Knoppix live CD, use 'dd' to copy the FAT32 system partition from
> PATA drive to SATA drive.
> 5) Remove PATA drive
> 6) Boot from XP Pro CD to a rescue prompt
> 7) Issue FIXMBR, FIXBOOT and BOOTCFG /RESCAN commands
> 8) Boot from SATA drive
> 9) arrrrgh, doesn't work.
>
>

BAR wrote:

> Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
> disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.
>

Thanks, I'll try this as soon as I can find a floppy drive. Will the repair
procedure overwrite my existing system files (ie stomp all over SP1 and my
device drivers?)

Thanks again.

BAR wrote:

> Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive floppy
> disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.
>

I've now tried that. It took the drivers from the floppy (and seemed to copy
them to the HD), but even after the repair install it wouldn't boot.

I've found a solution though: I copied the whole drive (not just a single
partition) to SATA, and it booted fine. So there is clearly something
essential that Windows puts on a drive that's not in the system partition,
and not on the MBR either.

Or possibly XP is using the other partition(s) on your drive for system or
swap file(s). I have seen this happen on certain configurations.

Recently imaged a Boot partition on a RAID 0 array, installed a new SATA
drive, partitioned and "restored" my RAID image to the new HD. XP took off
without an issue. Normally there is no need for F6, Raid Drivers when a
single SATA disk is used, however YMMV in that respect.

I would check under disk management for the heck of it to see if your (now
SATA) drive shows on partion as boot and the other as system.

FWIW, Len

"Pete" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:h4KTc.589$(E-Mail Removed)...
> BAR wrote:
>
>> Do a repair installation and don't forget to prepare the Raid drive
>> floppy
>> disk so that you can provide the drivers during the installation process.
>>
>
> I've now tried that. It took the drivers from the floppy (and seemed to
> copy
> them to the HD), but even after the repair install it wouldn't boot.
>
> I've found a solution though: I copied the whole drive (not just a single
> partition) to SATA, and it booted fine. So there is clearly something
> essential that Windows puts on a drive that's not in the system partition,
> and not on the MBR either.
>

Len wrote:

> I would check under disk management for the heck of it to see if your (now
> SATA) drive shows one partion as boot and the other as system.

I got to that point once, when I was messing with boot.ini. The partition on
the PATA drive was 'boot', and the partition on the SATA drive was
'system'. But I couldn't get the SATA drive to function as boot until I
copied the entire disk image. So I have a solution, but still don't know
exactly why.