PC won't boot O/S

[Phisherman]

I have an old Sony PC with a Promise hard drive controller, Maxtor
hard drive and another (old) hard drive. The promise drivers show
on-screen, but halfway through the Win 2000 Pro boot up process the
machine stops (blue screen of death) with

Inaccessible boot device. Use Chkdsk /f ...

I attempted to boot from a floppy or (Win 2000) CD, but that results
in a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. I
looked in the BIOS to make the boot order: removable devices, then
CD, then hard drive. The floppy I have contains the following hidden
files:

boot.ini
ntdetect.com
ntltr

I can access the BIOS. It shows the correct time and hardware
settings so I don't think the MoBo battery cell is bad.

I have another (working) Windows 2000 Pro PC to help with
troubleshooting.

How can I get this PC to boot from a floppy? What other things should
I test? Please help!

 

[Ron Badour]

This is an XP newsgroup so you might want to consider posting to:
windows.public.win2000.general

 

[Phisherman]

This is an XP newsgroup so you might want to consider posting to:
windows.public.win2000.general

My bad--Sorry about that. (But, don't Windows 2000 and XP have a lot
in common?)

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

My bad--Sorry about that. (But, don't Windows 2000 and XP have a lot
in common?)

Just go there.

 

[Ron Badour]

A lot in common, yes, but not the same; therefore, you take the chance of
getting well intentioned but wrong info.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My bad--Sorry about that. (But, don't Windows 2000 and XP have a lot
in common?)

Yes, a lot in common--but not everything in common. Relying on
information pertaining to one, unless you *know* it's also true of the
other, can get you into a *lot* of trouble.