PC asks to choose an OS

[Joe Starin]

You got it. Plus, I (and others reading this thread) learned quite a bit
about how/why computers boot. It's all good. Joe

At least there will be one less source of confusion in the steps required
to go through to solve the problem.

John

Quick thought.... Once I try disconnecting the older 60GB drive, I hope
the B&W screeen asking me to "choose an operating system" disappears.
After all, that was the purpose of my original post LOL. Joe

You're very welcome-Joe
Good luck!

~Gary



Gary and John:

If I'm booting off the new drive, I'm pleased. Sounds like a lot of good
news. Yes, I want to use the new drive entirely and eliminate the old
noisy 60GB drive. Western Digital (without the new info you both had, in
all fairness) was fairly certain I was booting from the old drive and
was quick to send me off to Microsoft to learn how to "edit the
'boot-ini' file." WD also said that even it I disconnected the old drive
and everything booted okay, I would still get the B&W screen prompting
me to "choose an operating system," with both choices being EXACTLY the
same: "Windows XP (default)."

I'll try disconnecting the old drive and see what happens.

Since the drive swap and cloning, I can no longer access msconfig using
START/RUN as I used to. When I try, an hourglass appears for a fraction
of a second, and nothing else happens. No crashes or anything, just
unresponsive. I can run other programs using START/RUN, but not msconfig
anymore. But that's a story for another post.

Thanks for all your time and dialog. You've both answered important
questions, and probably prevented me from making some unnecessary and
probably serious adjustments.

I'll post my "disconnection" results just for yuks, but it seems like we
can all move on to other things. Cheers from the state of Ohio, USA.

Joe


You are booting off of Disk 0, the 320GB drive, the (System) label on
the drive confirms this. Everything seems to be right, that the old
"C:" drive adopted another drive letter when you booted the new one is
perfectly normal, you can't have two drives with the same letter
assignment running at the same time.

You say that you want to permanently retire the old noisy 60GB hard
disk, just unplug the power connector at the old drive and reboot the
computer. What happens when you try this? What does the Disk
Management tool report? Does the 320GB drive retain its "C:"
designation? Can you run the msconfig tool?

John


Joe Starin wrote:


I have NOT changed anything yet -- but will tonight. However, does
this info help clarify anything?

Disk 0
DRV2_VOL1 (C
298.09 GB FAT32
Healthy (System)

Disk 1
(H
55.9 GB FAT32
Health (Active)

Joe



Hi, John John. Many thanks to you and Gary for staying with this
thread.

You're correct that I did not have the parent hidden from the clone
on first boot. And, when I first booted after cloning, I had the old
60GB drive connected to the black (end) connector on the EIDE cable,
while the new drive was connected to the middle (grey) connector.
Both drives were set to "cable select." IIRC, the new drive after
boot was named "H" and the old 60GB was still "C."

At the suggestion of Western Digital, I've since physically swapped
the position of both drives -- could that have prompted the PC to
assign/reassign the letter "C" to the new 320GB drive, and "H" to the
old 60GB drive? Just a guess. And don't I want the new (parent?)
drive to be named "C" anyway?

I know your advice is good from earlier posts on these newsgroups,
but your advice seems to differ from that of Gary, who suggested that
I take the old drive "boot.ini" content (last line only, the line
below the [operating systems] line) and add it to "boot.ini" file of
the new drive (making it the last line immediately following the
[operating systems] line.) I'll do either or both.

Joe



It looks like you are booting the old Windows installation and that
your drive letter assignment was changed because you neglected to
take precautions to have the parent hidden from the clone on the
first boot after the cloning operation.

Modify the boot.ini file on the old 60GB drive to read as so:


[boot loader]

timeout = 30

default = multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS = "60Gb Microsoft
Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS = "320GB Microsoft
Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

I don't know the real layout of your drives, the 60GB & 320GB may
not represent the actual drive, but it doesn't matter the
installations will still boot, the stuff between the "quotation
marks" is just descriptive text that you see at the boot menu when
the computer boots, it is just for human eyes you could put what
ever you wanted between the quotation marks and the operating system
would still boot.

Try to boot the computer with the new modified boot.ini file and
report your findings.

To access the Disk Managment tool click on Start-> Run type
diskmgmt.msc in the box and then press <Enter>.

Using the SET command at the Command Prompt will reveal a great deal
of valuable information. To start a Command Prompt click on
Start -> Run type cmd in the box and then press <Enter>.

John

Joe Starin wrote:



Yes, you run into that situation where you already have too many
"new entries" on the new drive. I'm there now.



When I initially used the DataLifeguard tool, a full 17,000 (or
maybe 1,700?) files "could not be copied." Everything seems to
work, although it appears that I'm still booting from the older
60GB drive (now named "H.") One definite casualty: I cannot run
msconfig from the start/run menu anymore. I also suspect that my
Norton AV did not make the cut.



Anyway, I looked at both "boot.ini" files. And, as you suggested,
it looks like I need to copy that critical last line from the old
drive to the new. FWIW, here are the two files:



Boot.ini file from new 320GB drive DRV2_VOL1 (C <<

[boot loader]

timeout = 30

default =multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows

[operating systems]



Boot.ini file from old 60GB Local Disk (H drive: <<

[boot loader]

timeout = 30

default = multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS = "Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn



You used Acronis to re-copy from old to new, right? Could I use
Acronis to compare drives - and sort of see where the WD copy
effort came up short? Guess I could also copy the key "My
Documents" folder

from the new drive to the old. Then clone the whole old drive back
to

the new drive after a reformat.. <grin>.



Thanks, again. Western Digital tech support was partially helpful,
but quickly suggested I contact Microsoft to find out how to "edit
the 'boot.ini' file."



Joe






Also,Joe-I might add-
Some of the programs didn't completely transfer
fully,(IE7,Avast,Intellipoint& Intellitype) & I couldn't reinstall
the mouse/keyboard apps. because it kept saying that I had to
uninstall them 1st.(The uninstallers weren't even there)
I even used Regseeker to remove any keys related to the
mouse/keyboard software & they still wouldn't reinstall.

I didn't know at that time,what other programs might have not
copied fully & didn't want to wait to find out,so I downloaded the
trial version of Acronis(to the old HDD/operating system) & cloned
the drive to the new 1.
This worked great & didn't even have to edit the boot files this
time.The whole clone took less time than the DLG tools from WD &
everything was up & running(& still is)in less than 10 mins.
Just thought I would offer another option in case you have the
same problem,before the data on the old drive becomes too
"outdated" compared to the new drive's contents.

~Gary


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