Booting XP prob, is installed on 2 hd's

[McGrandpa [AGQx]]

My old 30g hd, drive C: is dying quickly.

I bought a 60g, got it formatted to FAT32, and booted my XP Pro cd,
installed XP Pro on the new 60g, it starts up fine, and the new installation
got itself actived fine. So I'm thinking "That was easy, now I can clean
out all the stuff off the 30g and I'm all set!"

Nope.

Since installing XP on the 60, I get a boot menu with 2 choices, the first
being the new install on the 60 and that works fine. The second being
the old 30g and that's corrupted, and XP wouldn't finish a repair reinstall
on the 30.

This morning the 30g wouldn't start again. BIOS couldn't find it. OK,
so let it just boot from the 60. Nope. "Invalid System Disk"! So I'm
glad I didn't simply reformat the 30 right away. I did get it started and
that is how I'm here. But it won't last for long.

How do I get the new install of XP on the 60g to be a valid system disk
and boot the install that's on it, without the 30g? The only option I know
of is to do a repair reinstall on the 60g already.

With 98SE it was easy, just boot a DOS disk and do a SYS C: and make
that partition the active one.

I don't know what to do here with XP.
Thanks for any help folks. Just trying to avoid re-installing and losing all
the stuff I just spend a week setting up.
McGrandpa

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Problem you have is, the boot files are on the old drive. You needed to
install to the new drive with the old drive removed/disabled.

Rearrange the drives so that the new one is in the master postition and the
old one is sitting on the desk next to the pc, totally detached. Boot the
WinXP CD and do a repair installation (just start a new installation and it
should detect the existing system and offer to repair it). This should
resolve the boot problems, then you can reattach the old drive and copy
files off of it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[McGrandpa [AGQx]]

OKay! That by far sounds the best. Will do that in the morning
when I get up fresh
Hopefully, XP will 'offer' to repair the installation. Everything seems
to be on the new drive except for the system files. And, you can't
get them there with a SYS D: as with 98.

If I'd have known about this little quirk, I'd have disconnected the
old drive before booting the cd at all. I figured that if XP is going
to install itself on the new HD, it would automatically make it a
bootable system. It didn't. :-(

Thank you very much for that one!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays All!
Michael

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

Glad to help, but it's not really a quirk, it's the way it's supposed to
work.

Just an FYI, but all operating systems (not just Windows) will generally
install their boot files to the root of the active partition, regardless of
where you install the system files. Some, like many variants of Linux, have
advanced setup options that will allow the knowledgable person to install
them elsewhere, Windows doesn't have this type of option. The reason you ran
into this problem is that setup did what it is supposed to do - install the
boot files to the root of the drive that the system indicates is the primary
boot device. Had you set the new drive as the active drive before running
setup, it would have installed them there instead.

Information on a repair installation for you:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[McGrandpa [AGQx]]

That got it, thanks

McG.

Hi,

Problem you have is, the boot files are on the old drive. You needed to
install to the new drive with the old drive removed/disabled.

Rearrange the drives so that the new one is in the master postition and the
old one is sitting on the desk next to the pc, totally detached. Boot the
WinXP CD and do a repair installation (just start a new installation and it
should detect the existing system and offer to repair it). This should
resolve the boot problems, then you can reattach the old drive and copy
files off of it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone