Missing boot files on new hard drive

[sdarisi]

Folks,

I need some assistance in getting my new hard drive to be bootable in
XP. Here is the background.

I have a Sony desktop (PCVRX572 purchased in Thanksgiving 2001) that
came with a 60Gb hard drive and XP Home. Over the past few years, I
have accumulated programs and data leading to a close to full drive. I
purchased a new Seagate 200Gb HDD with the intent of replacing the
original.

Installed the new HDD as a slave via an add-on controller card (Promise
UTA100TX2 ) that came bundled with another drive (Western Digital 160Gb
HDD). After a bunch of system updates (BIOS, ATAPI.SYS, etc), the
system recognizes the full capacity of 200 Gb in XP as well as during
the boot sequence. I then installed XP Pro onto the new HDD (atleast
that is what I thought). Did not think much when the system showed a
dual boot option (XP Home and XP Pro) after the installation was
complete. Spent the last few days, installing other applns including
Office 2003, IM, Spyware, AV, etc....

Here is the problem - when I disconnected the original (master drive)
and configured the new drive to be the master, I could not get the
system up. Error of 'NOT A SYSTEM DISK'. Reverted back to the original
config of master and slave. Brought the system up and noticed that
there were no boot files on the new HDD! All boot files were on the
original disk.

Short of having to re-do all of the work, can some one please share a
fix to make the new HDD a boot drive?

NO, I do not want to clone the original drive to the new drive. I have
GHOST 2003 but do not want all the Sony junk and other junk from the
old drive.

Your suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Cheers
Subbarayudu

 

[Thomas Wendell]

The problem is, when you installed the new XPpro, it still wrote the boot
files to C: , that being the old drive...

Disconnect old drive and make new master. Boot from XP CD (if needed check
boot settings in BIOS). Press 1st R(epair) to get to repair console. Run
FIXBOOT. Boot from HD.
If needed you can now connect the old drive as slave and use DATA from it.

If you want the dual boot the other way (Pro and Home), I don't remember
what to put in boot.ini on 1st drive, but you can look at the old drive's
boot.ini to get an idea...



--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Folks,

I need some assistance in getting my new hard drive to be bootable in
XP. Here is the background.

I have a Sony desktop (PCVRX572 purchased in Thanksgiving 2001) that
came with a 60Gb hard drive and XP Home. Over the past few years, I
have accumulated programs and data leading to a close to full drive. I
purchased a new Seagate 200Gb HDD with the intent of replacing the
original.

Installed the new HDD as a slave via an add-on controller card (Promise
UTA100TX2 ) that came bundled with another drive (Western Digital 160Gb
HDD). After a bunch of system updates (BIOS, ATAPI.SYS, etc), the
system recognizes the full capacity of 200 Gb in XP as well as during
the boot sequence. I then installed XP Pro onto the new HDD (atleast
that is what I thought). Did not think much when the system showed a
dual boot option (XP Home and XP Pro) after the installation was
complete. Spent the last few days, installing other applns including
Office 2003, IM, Spyware, AV, etc....

Here is the problem - when I disconnected the original (master drive)
and configured the new drive to be the master, I could not get the
system up. Error of 'NOT A SYSTEM DISK'. Reverted back to the original
config of master and slave. Brought the system up and noticed that
there were no boot files on the new HDD! All boot files were on the
original disk.

Short of having to re-do all of the work, can some one please share a
fix to make the new HDD a boot drive?

NO, I do not want to clone the original drive to the new drive. I have
GHOST 2003 but do not want all the Sony junk and other junk from the
old drive.

Your suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Cheers
Subbarayudu

Your new installation will only run while your original disk is in
place and while the new drive is visible as drive D:. While it
would be quite easy to make the new drive bootable when it
is the only drive in the PC, this would still leave you with the
drive letter problem. Windows would not run properly.

Here are a couple of easy options:
- Make sure that the new disk is the only disk in the PC,
then re-install WinXP.
- Get a cheap second hand disk (540 MBytes will do!),
then make it the boot disk and accept that your system
runs off drive D:.

 

[Thomas Wendell]

Right, forgot that letter problem....


--
Tumppi
Reply to group
=================================================
Most learned on nntp://news.mircosoft.com
Helsinki, Finland (remove _NOSPAM)
(translations from FI/SE not always accurate)
=================================================

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Subbarayudu.

You have some overlapping problems. The bottom line is that you need to
install WinXP Pro again with ONLY your new HDD connected. But you probably
can preserve your installed applications, drivers, settings and data by
doing an "in-place upgrade". But you will need to do it in the right way.

The overlapping problem is that if you plan to boot from your new HDD
connected to that Promise controller, you will need to let WinXP Setup
integrate drivers for the controller into your copy of WinXP. You can
easily add such a drive/controller as a secondary drive, as you already have
been doing, but BOOTing from such a device is different. You'll need to
have the Promise drivers on a floppy diskette and have that floppy handy
when you run WinXP Setup. And the only way to do that is to boot from the
WinXP CD-ROM and install WinXP again.

One of the first things Setup does is detect the existing hardware,
including HDs and their partitions. If it finds an existing Active
partition, it will call it Drive C: and install WinXP's system files (NTLDR,
NTDETECT.COM and Boot.ini) there, making it the System Partition. The only
way to change this is to run Setup again. We can choose the Boot Volume
(where the \Windows folder will reside), but Setup decides which will be the
System Partition.

With your new HDD/controller properly configured and all other HDs
disconnected, and with that floppy at hand, follow the instructions for an
in-place upgrade in KB article 315341:
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341

Don't overlook this small paragraph in KB 315341: "If your computer
requires a third-party mass storage device driver or HAL, make sure that you
have a copy of the files on a floppy disk before you perform a repair or
in-place upgrade." This means your Promise controller diskette.

Use Method 2, reinstalling from the CD. Do not press "R" the first time it
is offered, in Step 3, but press Enter there and press "R" in Step 5. Let
Setup begin to install WinXP Pro. Watch carefully for the invitation to
Press F6 to install mass storage drivers. Press F6 and wait while Setup
seems not to notice and proceeds to copy lots of files to the HD. When it
finally stops, follow the instructions onscreen to install your Promise
driver. Then Setup will continue, including rebooting for the first time
from your Seagate drive to start the GUI phase of installing WinXP.

Using the in-place upgrade preserves most of your existing WinXP Registry,
which means that your installed drivers and applications should not need to
be reinstalled. However, you may need to adjust the drive letters, as the
others have suggested.

Even if Ghost worked perfectly, it would copy instructions for how to boot
from your OLD drive. You still would need to do the in-place upgrade - with
the F6/floppy shuffle - to provide instructions for booting from your new
drive.

Let us know how this works out for you.

RC