Boot problem with second SATA hard drive

[Oenone]

I have three hard drives installed in my system, a SATA drive containing
Windows XP, another SATA drive that was until this morning empty, and an IDE
drive with data on it.

This morning I disconnected the power to my WinXP drive, and then installed
Vista on the other SATA drive. I did it like this as I want the two to be
entirely independent of each other, and planned to simply set the primary
boot drive to switch between the two operating systems.

Vista installed correctly and booted up fine on initial installation. I then
reconnected the WinXP drive and this booted into Windows XP fine.

I am no longer able to boot into Vista, though. When I set Vista's drive as
the primary hard drive, I get post the POST and then get the message,
"SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER."

The only way I can get the system to boot is to restore the WinXP drive as
the primary boot drive and boot back into XP.

Is there something I'm missing that is preventing me from being able to boot
using the Vista drive?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I have three hard drives installed in my system, a SATA drive containing
Windows XP, another SATA drive that was until this morning empty, and an IDE
drive with data on it.

This morning I disconnected the power to my WinXP drive, and then installed
Vista on the other SATA drive. I did it like this as I want the two to be
entirely independent of each other, and planned to simply set the primary
boot drive to switch between the two operating systems.

Vista installed correctly and booted up fine on initial installation. I then
reconnected the WinXP drive and this booted into Windows XP fine.

I am no longer able to boot into Vista, though. When I set Vista's drive as
the primary hard drive, I get post the POST and then get the message,
"SYSTEM BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER."

The only way I can get the system to boot is to restore the WinXP drive as
the primary boot drive and boot back into XP.

Is there something I'm missing that is preventing me from being able to boot
using the Vista drive?

The problem is probably that the Vista installer was unable to see
the WinXP installation while it was installing Vista. The boot manager
for Vista is different from the boot manager for the WinNT/2K/XP family,
although it will use a software "adapter" if it knows about the WinNT/2K/XP
at installation time - just as WinNT/2K/XP will "adapt" if it can see
Win98/98ME at installation time. If you have the time, try re-installing
Vista again while the WinXP hard drive is connected.

If you have more questions, try posting them in the
"microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup" newsgroup.

*TimDaniels*

 

[DaveW]

The mistake you made was disconnecting the Original XP harddrive as you
loaded the copy of XP onto the second SATA drive. As you apparently did not
know, when you have a dual boot system, the C: drive, which in this case is
your Original XP drive, has to contain files noting that there is ANOTHER
drive in the computer that ALSO has XP on it. The Original XP drive then
gives you the choice each time you boot as to which XP drive you want to
boot from.

 

[Oenone]

The mistake you made was disconnecting the Original XP harddrive as
you loaded the copy of XP onto the second SATA drive. As you
apparently did not know, when you have a dual boot system, the C:
drive, which in this case is your Original XP drive, has to contain
files noting that there is ANOTHER drive in the computer that ALSO
has XP on it. The Original XP drive then gives you the choice each
time you boot as to which XP drive you want to boot from.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the suggestion. I should point out that I've only ever had one
copy of XP installed (on my first drive), the second drive was empty before
I installed Vista on it.

I have actually reinstalled Vista again now (several times actually!) with
the XP drive connected, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. I
was expecting Vista to add an OS selection menu that would appear after the
POST has completed, but no such menu was added. If I have my first drive
selected in the BIOS then it boots into XP, if I have the second drive
selected then instead of Vista appearing, I get (exact wording this time):

Boot from CD :
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

This is even if I completely remove the DVD drive from the list of boot
devices in the BIOS.

I have discovered that if I leave the Vista installation DVD in the drive
(but I DON'T select to boot from it), Vista then starts up perfectly. But
when I boot with the DVD drive empty, I get the message above once again.

I'm still stuck with this and would appreciate any further suggestions
anyone can offer!

Many thanks,

 

[Oenone]

I'm still stuck with this and would appreciate any further suggestions
anyone can offer!

Should anyone else encounter this problem in the future, I have now found a
solution that worked on my system thanks to a poster in the
microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup newsgroup.

By disconnecting both the WinXP SATA drive and also the IDE drive with my
data files, so that the Vista SATA drive was the only drive connected to the
system, installation then completed successfully and allowed me to boot into
Vista without the DVD in the drive.

The other drives could then be reconnected without any problems. Booting
into both XP and Vista now works by selecting the appropriate drive in the
BIOS.

Many thanks to everyone that helped me get this resolved.