Bad Hard Disk Problem

[omerc.net]

Some background on my system,
I have two Hard Drives:
1. 20GB IDE - Quantum Fireball
2. 120GB SATA - Western Digital, devided into three 20GB of system,
50GB for downloads and 50GB for games.

I was using XP, and it was starting to get abit slow, and I heared some
noise from the HD, so I rebooted, and that was the end of my system,
after that it just never booted up again, when I used ScanDisk it said
that my MFT is corrupted.
I wasn't worried at all, that's why I have three partitions, I don't
save anything important on C, that's what I use D and E for.
so I went ahead and started the Windows XP Boot CD, but it kept showing
me the BSOD relating to ntfs.sys when it scans the hard disks in the
begining.
So I got a copy of Vista from work, and kindly enough, it didn't crash
when scanning the disks, but still, I couldn't re-create the bad C
partition.
So I formatted my other 20GB disk and installed on it.

Now, if I boot up with the 120GB connected, I get an error saying my
system32\config\system file is missing/corrupted
but if I boot w/out the 120GB connected, everything seems fine, this
happened with both Vista and XP installed.. ( I installed XP/Vista
about 6 times today..)

I wanna plug back the 120GB so I can back it up, and get a new one, I
don't wanna take any chances that it'll go crazy on me again, but I
can't boot when it's plugged in.

There's no active partition on the 120GB, and I'm not even booting to
it, why is interrupting with the other disk's boot ?

 

[Guest]

This could be the problem with "Boot Device Periority" option is BIOS. Maybe,
when you connect your 120GB HDD then it tooks the first place in Boot
Sequence. Therefore, you get the error message. As you said, you have
installed Windows on 20GB hard disk drive and when you boot without 120GB HDD
then it works fine.

So, I will suggest that you should check the BIOS settings. BIOS settings
are different for each motherboard manufacturer. So look around carefully.

if there is "Boot Device Periority" option then put to 20GB HDD on the
above. If you can't find this option then look for First Boot Device - Second
Boot Device option. Try changing them according to your HDD installation
configuration. E.g. if 20GB HDD is Primary Master then set First Boot Deviec
to HDD0 else HDD1.

Hope this is what you were looking for, let us know!

 

[omerc.net]

As I mentioned in the end, there's no active partition with a bootable
content on the 120GB,
I'm not booting from the 120GB for sure, because I was getting either
XP's NTLDR or Vista's BootManager with the same error about the corrupt
system file.

I'm cirten I'm not booting from the 120GB, using Vista's Rescue CD I
managed to even eliminate the bad partition, leaving me with only two
50GB partitions and nothing else on the 120GB.
But still when I plug it in I'm getting that wierd error..

 

[Guest]

There is some misunderstanding. I never write that you have installed Windows
on 120GB HDD. I told you to check if the 20GB Primary Partition is set to
active and check the Boot Sequence in BIOS.

Let us know, if you are still getting the error message after changing the
boot sequence and boot device priority.

 

[omerc.net]

The boot sequence was set to boot using the 20GB
When I doubled checked the BIOS I noticed that the 20GB is set as
Primary Slave.
The thing was that the 20GB was single on the IDE cable but it was
jumped as Slave
so it booted from the 120GB, but the Boot Loader was looking for the
files from the main master it had on the BIOS,
which was the 120GB.
I jumpered the 20GB as Master and it worked

Simple solution to a wierd problem

Thanks for your help