Hard Disk Crashed

[Jacky Luk]

Hi,
I've got a minor disaster here, with a SATA 160G Hard disk crashed... I
amended the bad sectors, but the hard disk still sometimes goes squeaking...
Initially, I had a 2nd copy of Windows XP installed on another hard drive
but was hooked with the boot.ini on my crashed drive. I wonder how to revive
this orphaned drive. I can't remember its volume etc
Thanks
Jack

 

[Guest]

set the other HDD as primary master. insure jumpers set correctly.

set HDD(0) as first boot device in bios.

or leave as pri slave and set HDD(1) as first boot device in bios.

 

[Guest]

the hard disk still sometimes goes squeaking...

colorful, but meaningless

Initially, I had a 2nd copy of Windows XP installed on another hard drive
but was hooked with the boot.ini on my crashed drive.

By "crashed", you mean electrically Dead? And it was the "System" drive.

I wonder how to revive
this orphaned drive.
Thanks
Jack

Never tried to boot a "2nd drive" alone. If necessary, use a friends
computer; go here, and make the floppy.

http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_create_an_emergency_sta.htm

Should get you in, but I 'm not sure if you'll need to copy the floppy to
C: , and edit boot.ini, or not.

XPerienced Help here?

 

[Guest]

Forgot; you'll need to put some other drive in place of the crashed primary.
[Physically install into computer]
Otherwise, nothing will likely run.
Substitute drive will have to have same number of partitions as the
crashed one, and contain a Windows OS. An old "98 HD would work.
Boot with the floppy; copy ntldr & NetDetect to the '98 C: drive.
Open Notepad, copy/paste this :

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\ = "Microsoft Windows '98"

Save as: boot.ini
Choose: "All files" under "save as" type.
Save to C:\

That would give you Dual boot with '98. You can substitute a new install of
XP, of course. Edit boot.ini differently, 'course.