hard drive difficulties

[Guest]

My m/c has 2 hard drives. Both of them had Windows XP Pro installed. On the
start-up screen I could indicate which hard drive I wished to access.
However, following a somewhat botched attempt to install Linux in a separate
partition on my first hard drive, I eventually ended up reformatting the
drive. I have since re-installed XP but I cannot now access the 2nd h/d from
the start-up screen. I can see the second drive on "My Computer" but am
unable to access it. Any help or advice most gratefully accepted; I do not
want really to reformat and then re-install.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

[Sharon F]

My m/c has 2 hard drives. Both of them had Windows XP Pro installed. On the
start-up screen I could indicate which hard drive I wished to access.
However, following a somewhat botched attempt to install Linux in a separate
partition on my first hard drive, I eventually ended up reformatting the
drive. I have since re-installed XP but I cannot now access the 2nd h/d from
the start-up screen. I can see the second drive on "My Computer" but am
unable to access it. Any help or advice most gratefully accepted; I do not
want really to reformat and then re-install.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

If I understand your post correctly, you had a dual boot setup with 2 XP
installations. If the "start-up screen" was the text presented by the XP
boot loader, then the needed boot info for the second XP install was wiped
out when you formatted and reinstalled XP on the first drive.

Edit boot.ini to add the info about the second XP on the 2nd hard drive and
you should get your boot menu options back. The following article should
help:

How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q289022

One concern: That you are not able to "access" the other drive. If you are
trying to say that you are not able to boot the second XP, then the above
still applies. If you're saying that you cannot access anything at all on
that drive, then something else is going on with it - possibly drive
failure or a corrupt disk.