No boot from SATA with after parallel IDE removed

[Peter Maughan]

After installing XP to boot from a SATA disk (C on a new build PC, I then
installed a parallell IDE drive into the PC, so as to transfer a large data
file (actually a Ghost image of the old PC as an emergency backup, in case
the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard had missed copying anything). The
parallell IDE was seen as the D: drive and I successfully transfered the
Ghost image file from D: to C:. Everthing worked fine, so far.

Then I removed the parallell IDE drive and the PC failed to boot from the
SATA disk. It even failed to boot again when I put the parallell IDE drive
back into the computer. Attempts to repair XP from the Windows CD failed.

Could anybody explain what happened? I had to reinstall XP on a newly
formatted disk, which was very time consuming. Would like to avoid the same
problem in the future.

Peter

 

[Jerry]

It's only a guess but I'll bet the Ghost image you copied from the parallel
to the SATA overrode the existing XP you had installed and that then screwed
everything up.

 

[Chris Catt]

Hi, no sata drivers, if your parallel drive has XP you'll need to install
those onto the drive before ghosting across....
Chris C

 

[Guest]

Windows may be expecting to boot from the SATA controller and that
controller's driver as previously mentioned. You will then have to run the
recovery console and use FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to allow booting into the system.
Besides loading the required boot files it will set the active partition and
allow you to boot. Put in the Windows install CD and reboot to that and
choose recovery console then type these commands after logging in... FIXMBR
then FIXBOOT, in that order (doesn't have to be upper case when you type),
then type EXIT. It should then reboot and get you into Windows.

 

[Peter Maughan]

Hi, Thanks to both for your replies.

Actually, I didn't use the Ghost image file in any way. I just put it onto
the SATA drive, in case it was needed later. I suppose it was a bit
misleading of me to mention to you that it was a Ghost image file; it might
have been any other data file that I wanted to save.

What I thought might have happened was this:

Windows XP booted from the SATA drive, as set up in the original
installation. Then when it found the new parallel drive it decided that it
preferred to boot from a parallel drive, now present, and changed the
boot.ini (or another) file in some way to note the parallel drives' presence
in future. Then I removed the parallel drive, because I had only installed
it temporarily to copy over the large data (Ghost) file, and next time
Windows tried to boot it couldn't.

I only wish I could understand what happened a bit better.

Peter