XP Boot Problem

[Guest]

Good afternoon,

I recently built a new computer for myself and I took the hard drive from my
old computer which has Win2K installed on it. I booted up in Win2K and from
there installed a fresh copy of WinXP Pro on my brand new hard drive. In my
BIOS setting I still had the hard drive with Win2K on it as the boot device
and when boots up, I have option of running Win2K or WinXP Pro. The Win2K is
installed on the C: drive and the WinXP Pro is installed on the E: drive.
The problem is that I changed my boot device to the new hard drive with
WinXP Pro on it and the machine reports the generic message that there is no
boot device. I found out the "boot.ini", "NTDETECT.COM", and "ntldr" files
were missing from my Windows directory on the WinXP Pro hard drive. I copied
these over and this is what the boot.ini file looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

So, in short I cannot boot WinXP solely from the hard drive it is installed
on, the hard drive on which Win2K is installed must be the boot device, and
from there I can boot WinXP Pro. How do I resolve this issue so that I can
boot cleanly off of the WinXP Pro hard drive?

Thank you,
Charles

 

[peter]

The problem stems from the fact that you set up a dual boot.By having Win2k on C
and installing XP onto E XP took over the MBR on the C drive.
In that section it tells your computer how to boot......you moved the C drive to
slave and your computer has no MBR to read.
You need to do a repair installation of XP in order to be able to boot of that
drive......you will of course lose(heck you've already lost it by moving the
drives around)the dual boot.
XP REPAIR
.............................................................................

Boot from the CD or you can insert the CD while at the windows desktop but
when the setup screen appears, exit setup and reboot. If your system is set
to be able to boot from the CD, it should detect the disk and give a brief
message, during the boot up, if you wish to boot from the CD press any key.

Once you have pressed a key, setup should begin. You will see a reference
asking if you need to load special drivers and another notice that if you
wish to begin the ASR (Automatic Recovery Console) depress F2. Just let
setup run past all of that. It will continue to load files and drivers.

Then it will bring you to a screen. Eventually, you will come to a screen
with the option to (1) setup Windows or (2) Repair Windows Installation
using the Recovery console.

The first option, to setup Windows is the one you want and requires you to
press enter. When asked, press F8 to accept the end user agreement. Setup
will then search for previous versions of Windows. Upon finding your
version, it will ask if you wish to Repair your current installation or
install fresh. Press R, that will run a repair installation. From there
on, follow the screens.

The Recovery Console might work as well
Try booting up using the XP CD-ROM and choose to repair. Then choose the
Recovery Console Option...
Choose the number corresponding to your XP version and enter your
Administrator Password (then press enter).

After that you'll see a command prompt...enter the following command:

bootcfg /rebuild" command to fix boot.ini.
FIXBOOT will fix the boot sector on the boot drive,
FIXMBR will fix the master boot record if the NT loader
complains of a missing HAL or unmountable boot volume.


After the process is completed enter the command EXIT to quit (and the
system should auto reboot OK from that point onwards...

I would try the recovery console first.....nothing to lose and it takes less
time.
peter

Good afternoon,

I recently built a new computer for myself and I took the hard drive from my
old computer which has Win2K installed on it. I booted up in Win2K and from
there installed a fresh copy of WinXP Pro on my brand new hard drive. In my
BIOS setting I still had the hard drive with Win2K on it as the boot device
and when boots up, I have option of running Win2K or WinXP Pro. The Win2K is
installed on the C: drive and the WinXP Pro is installed on the E: drive.
The problem is that I changed my boot device to the new hard drive with
WinXP Pro on it and the machine reports the generic message that there is no
boot device. I found out the "boot.ini", "NTDETECT.COM", and "ntldr" files
were missing from my Windows directory on the WinXP Pro hard drive. I copied
these over and this is what the boot.ini file looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

So, in short I cannot boot WinXP solely from the hard drive it is installed
on, the hard drive on which Win2K is installed must be the boot device, and
from there I can boot WinXP Pro. How do I resolve this issue so that I can
boot cleanly off of the WinXP Pro hard drive?

Thank you,
Charles

 

[Michael Stevens]

Good afternoon,

I recently built a new computer for myself and I took the hard drive
from my old computer which has Win2K installed on it. I booted up in
Win2K and from there installed a fresh copy of WinXP Pro on my brand
new hard drive. In my BIOS setting I still had the hard drive with
Win2K on it as the boot device and when boots up, I have option of
running Win2K or WinXP Pro. The Win2K is installed on the C: drive
and the WinXP Pro is installed on the E: drive. The problem is that I
changed my boot device to the new hard drive with WinXP Pro on it and
the machine reports the generic message that there is no boot device.
I found out the "boot.ini", "NTDETECT.COM", and "ntldr" files were
missing from my Windows directory on the WinXP Pro hard drive. I
copied these over and this is what the boot.ini file looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

So, in short I cannot boot WinXP solely from the hard drive it is
installed on, the hard drive on which Win2K is installed must be the
boot device, and from there I can boot WinXP Pro. How do I resolve
this issue so that I can boot cleanly off of the WinXP Pro hard drive?

Thank you,
Charles

You really messed up. When you moved the hard drives, the boot files were on
the C drive. Even if you get XP to boot, your registry settings will all be
pointing to the original location.
Try returning the system back to the original configuration. You can run
fixmbr, fixboot and bootcfg from the recovery console and hopefully get it
working again.
To change XP to the C drive, you should backup and clean install XP on the C
drive.
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm