Cannot boot to XP without CD-ROM in drive!!!

[Nightdrive]

With no CD-ROM in drive, i get the 'Please insert disk...' bootup error

If I put a bootable XP disc in the drive, and try again, even though I don't
select the 'boot from CD' option, Windows correctly boots up to my hard
disk!

Events leading up to this.
1) I used Norton Ghost (big mistake). I think it creates some kind of
temporary partition to store it's own files, then reboots to dos to perform
whatever operation you wanted to do.
However, it failed, leaving me unable to boot back into Windows.
2) Used Recovery Console, FIXBOOT to get Windows working. Appearred to work
3) ...until I remove the XP boot CD from the drive

It appears something Ghost has done is making XP look for certain boot files
on another volume (my CD-ROM) instead of from the Hard Disk.

Has anyone any ideas how to get it back?
Thanks in Advance.

Greg

 

[Nightdrive]

As I stated in my post, it is booting from the hard disk , NOT the cd-rom.
However, it appears to need files from the CD-ROM. This is nothing to do
with boot order in the BIOS.
It took a while to put down in writing my problem in some detail. Either
read it properly, or don't bother replying.
Thanks

Greg (Nightdrive)

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

As I stated in my post, it is booting from the hard disk , NOT the cd-rom.
However, it appears to need files from the CD-ROM. This is nothing to do
with boot order in the BIOS.
It took a while to put down in writing my problem in some detail. Either
read it properly, or don't bother replying.
Thanks

Greg (Nightdrive)

The respondents in this group are all volunteers. They sometimes
overlook this or that - it has happened to me too. The trick is to
restate the problem, perhaps in different words. Kicking somebody's
shin is probably not the best way to get him to help you.

I suspect that Dave C. is quite aware of the simple solution to
your problem. The question is whether he feels like posting it.

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

With no CD-ROM in drive, i get the 'Please insert disk...' bootup error

If I put a bootable XP disc in the drive, and try again, even though I don't
select the 'boot from CD' option, Windows correctly boots up to my hard
disk!

Events leading up to this.
1) I used Norton Ghost (big mistake). I think it creates some kind of
temporary partition to store it's own files, then reboots to dos to perform
whatever operation you wanted to do.
However, it failed, leaving me unable to boot back into Windows.
2) Used Recovery Console, FIXBOOT to get Windows working. Appearred to work
3) ...until I remove the XP boot CD from the drive

It appears something Ghost has done is making XP look for certain boot files
on another volume (my CD-ROM) instead of from the Hard Disk.

It might be a bad boot.ini file. You can run the Recovery Console and
run the command "bootcfg /rebuild" to try to fix the boot.ini file. You
might also run "fixboot" and "fixmbr" to make sure that everything else
is right.

Apparently there are non-default settings in Ghost that are required to
make a clone fully bootable. A lot of users fail to change these
settings and Ghost doesn't make the partition fully bootable.