How can I change my boot drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cliff Lewis
  • Start date Start date
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Cliff Lewis

My old drive is dying, so I decided to do a clean installation of
Windows XP on a new drive. I made the new drive a system disk, but was
unable to install from the CD unless I booted with the old drive. Now
I have Windows XP installed on the new drive, but I still can only get
it to boot from the old drive. Is there a way to make the new drive
the boot drive without starting over?
 
What you should do is move the CD drive ahead of the HDD in your systems
BIOS, then boot form the XP CD.. Install you new drive as master.. do not
connect the old drive to the system until you have a working XP on the new
drive.. then install the old drive as a slave and copy any data that you
want to save to the new drive..
 
I think that you can use BIOS to change the boot order -
Hard Drive, Floppy, CD-ROM, etc etc. If BIOS recognises
that you have two HDs plugged in, you should be able to
swap the HDs round in the boot sequence.
 
Not knowing exactly how you started your setup, the most likely answer is NO.

If you had XP running and then did an install to the new hard drive from
within XP, your 'system drive' the C Drive has pointers to two versions of XP
with the initial version being the preffered startup Operating System.

Given your apparant lack of technical knowledge and skill and perhaps lack
of other products such as Ghost, it wouldn't be prudent to attempt anything
other than a fresh installation.

Before you reinstall XP, boot up to your 'old' disk and the version of XP
where all your files and settings exist: then run Files and Settings Transfer
Wizard. Do FAST for ALL files, email etc etc. Save this to a new Folder on
this old drive.

Shutdown the PC and make sure the new drive is jumpered as Master and plug
the IDE interface cable from the old drive into the new drive: disconnect the
old drive.

Bootup the PC and make sure that the XP installation CD is in the CD drive.

XP should boot off the CD and begin installing.

If your system doesn't boot up from the CD check in BIOS to make sure that
it is set to boot from CD.

Complete the XP installation.

Now power off and connect the Old C Drive as Master to the secondary IDE
cable [not the same as your new C Drive].

Boot up into windows and run FAST from the new XP system and import from the
file you created on the old C Drive [it should now be the D drive].

When FAST is finished, you'll need to reinstall all the software [Office,
Adobe Acrobat etc.] and then you can check that everything functions
correctly.

If so then format the D Drive and power off.
 
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