How do I set new drive as boot?

[GreyBeard]

I have just loaded XP onto new Maxtor 250G by formatting with Maxtor's
MaxBlaster 3 software. Had to install as Drive F in other computer to
install. Other processes would not accept larger full partition. Moved new
system back to my main computer, as stand alone "C" drive. Rebooted.
System rebooted to end of hardware display and stopped right where it
usually defaults to primary drive and boots. Just stops loading. I am
assuming that either MaxBlaster of Windows XP should have offered to make
"C" drive a bootable drive. I went to drive recovery button on XP and asked
it to create a boot sector, but I see nothing when I reboot. Went to
options in MaxBlaster 3, and instructed it to create an MBR (maser boot
record?), but PC still boots up to same spot and stops.

How do I set up a functional boot sector on this new drive so that PC will
boot by default to XP on C: ?

Thanks!

 

[Tony]

I have just loaded XP onto new Maxtor 250G by formatting with Maxtor's
MaxBlaster 3 software. Had to install as Drive F in other computer to
install. Other processes would not accept larger full partition. Moved
new system back to my main computer, as stand alone "C" drive. Rebooted.
System rebooted to end of hardware display and stopped right where it
usually defaults to primary drive and boots. Just stops loading. I am
assuming that either MaxBlaster of Windows XP should have offered to make
"C" drive a bootable drive. I went to drive recovery button on XP and
asked it to create a boot sector, but I see nothing when I reboot. Went to
options in MaxBlaster 3, and instructed it to create an MBR (maser boot
record?), but PC still boots up to same spot and stops.

How do I set up a functional boot sector on this new drive so that PC will
boot by default to XP on C: ?

Thanks!

You cannot install XP on one PC then move it to another PC and expect it to
work. Different PC's have different hardware and XP installs different
drivers. Sometimes you can get round it by using the repair install from
the XP disk but you installed as F: on the other PC which can cause added
complications because it may think it should be part of a dual boot system.

You don't fully give the reason why you didn't install it on the PC that it
was to be used with. What do you mean by "Other processes would not accept
larger full partition"? Is this on the PC that you want to install XP on
because if it is, then installing XP on another PC then moving the hard
drive to the one with this problem is not going to get round the problem
i.e. it still won't recognise the larger partition.

You need to reinstall it a fresh on the PC you want to use it on.

So for starters tell us why exactly you couldn't do that.

You need to install XP on the PC that it is to be used with.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

I have just loaded XP onto new Maxtor 250G by formatting with Maxtor's
MaxBlaster 3 software. Had to install as Drive F in other computer to
install. Other processes would not accept larger full partition. Moved new
system back to my main computer, as stand alone "C" drive. Rebooted.
System rebooted to end of hardware display and stopped right where it
usually defaults to primary drive and boots. Just stops loading. I am
assuming that either MaxBlaster of Windows XP should have offered to make
"C" drive a bootable drive. I went to drive recovery button on XP and asked
it to create a boot sector, but I see nothing when I reboot. Went to
options in MaxBlaster 3, and instructed it to create an MBR (maser boot
record?), but PC still boots up to same spot and stops.

How do I set up a functional boot sector on this new drive so that PC will
boot by default to XP on C: ?

Thanks!

You need to use MaxBlaster to "clone" the old drive onto you new drive.
However, both drives must be installed in the same PC. Set up the old drive
as Master and the newer drive as Slave. Then, once the cloning is do,
disconnect the older drive and change the newer drive from Slave to Master
settings. Then, boot with the newer drive.


If you are planning to move the newer drive to a new PC, you will need to do a
repair reinstall of XP when the drive is in the new PC.

 

[GreyBeard]

I wasn't clear enough. When I "installed" XP on reformatted "new" drive
placed as Drive F on old computer, I did not complete the install. As soon
as the XP completed loading files to Drive F and rebooted to new OS on F it
started asking questions about my network connections. It had not yet
"found all hardware" or registered or such. I shut it down then and moved
it, hoping that it would start where it left off. Maybe I should not have
permitted the original reboot.

When I put the drive originally into my "newer" Athlon 800mhz computer, it
was to completely scrap the older install which had developed too many
quirks to repair. I reformatted the OS drive using MaxBlaster 3, then
attempted a clean install on the clean drive. Instead, XP install examined
my 250G drive and stated it was an incompatible partition. It required the
partition be deleted and re-made, but the new partition was about 130G, and
it would not allow a second partition to be made. I tried two 125G
partitions, which were created by MaxBlaster 3. XP again saw one
partition fine but claimed it had to write to the second, of "unknown"
format (both were NTSF), and refused to load to the first unless the second
was removed. The ONLY way I got XP to load to the large drive was to run
XP install from the old slow 300mgz PC, after re-formatting from the old
PC's XP Pro command prompt and rebooting to the XP Pro CD I bought
originally for the 800Mhz Athlon PC.

When I reboot my Athlon it never gets to the Windows splash screen, or even
gets out of the core CMOS commands. It gets to where you would chose
"press C to boot from CD" if there were a system CD in the CDR-RW drive.
If this were '98 I would run DSKCHK or DISKPART or such, but be given the
option to "add boot sector/partition" to drive to make it the primary boot
drive. I suspect it thinks it is a data storage drive only.

Is this possible/repairable?

And, I have never gotten a large Maxtor to format and load an OS without
MaxBlaster. Just always fails.

 

[Tony]

I wasn't clear enough. When I "installed" XP on reformatted "new" drive
placed as Drive F on old computer, I did not complete the install. As
soon as the XP completed loading files to Drive F and rebooted to new OS on
F it started asking questions about my network connections. It had not yet
"found all hardware" or registered or such. I shut it down then and moved
it, hoping that it would start where it left off. Maybe I should not have
permitted the original reboot.

It would have already installed the drivers for the motherboard chipset so
moving it to your other PC at this stage would cause problems.

When I put the drive originally into my "newer" Athlon 800mhz computer, it
was to completely scrap the older install which had developed too many
quirks to repair. I reformatted the OS drive using MaxBlaster 3, then
attempted a clean install on the clean drive. Instead, XP install
examined my 250G drive and stated it was an incompatible partition. It
required the partition be deleted and re-made, but the new partition was
about 130G, and it would not allow a second partition to be made. I tried
two 125G partitions, which were created by MaxBlaster 3. XP again saw
one partition fine but claimed it had to write to the second, of "unknown"
format (both were NTSF), and refused to load to the first unless the
second was removed. The ONLY way I got XP to load to the large drive
was to run XP install from the old slow 300mgz PC, after re-formatting
from the old PC's XP Pro command prompt and rebooting to the XP Pro CD I
bought originally for the 800Mhz Athlon PC.

The partition limit is probably either due to a bios restriction, solution
is to see if there is a bios update available for the motherboard or you do
not have SP1 or SP2 XP disk - prior to SP1, XP does not support hard drives
larger than 137GB

You need your bios to provide 48-bit LBA support and XP to at least include
SP1 when you install to use the 48-bit LBA support

When I reboot my Athlon it never gets to the Windows splash screen, or
even gets out of the core CMOS commands. It gets to where you would
chose "press C to boot from CD" if there were a system CD in the CDR-RW
drive. If this were '98 I would run DSKCHK or DISKPART or such, but be
given the option to "add boot sector/partition" to drive to make it the
primary boot drive. I suspect it thinks it is a data storage drive only.

Is this possible/repairable?

And, I have never gotten a large Maxtor to format and load an OS without
MaxBlaster. Just always fails.

Another solution to try is to slip stream SP2 into the XP installation disk
if your version isn't already SP1 or SP2
(http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp) but this
still depends on your bios being able to support the larger drive.