'PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT' when specific HDD chosen from Award BIOS Boot Menu

[Kevin]

I am unable to get a HDD with a previously good, working
installation of Win XP Pro on it to boot anymore.
I had Win98 on C (separate physical drive) and later put
Win XP Pro on D (separate physical drive). Ntdetect.com,
Ntldr & Boot.ini were all installed to the root of C by XP.
Unfortunately, I completely reformatted C before realizing
XP's ability to boot was contingent on entries in C's MBR
& root directory (my ultimate objective was to pull a copy
of D [XP] over to C after the reformat of C and make it my
operational O/S location from that point forward).
I can get into the Recovery Console from my XP install CD,
however, the 'bootcfg /rebuild' command ultimately failed,
initially, then I tried 'bootfix' - success, but, same
error on reboot. I tried creating a boot floppy with
Ntdetect.com, Ntldr & an appropriate Boot.ini file - same
error on reboot. Then I tried 'bootcfg /rebuild' again -
success, but, same error on reboot.
Can anyone help dig me out of this hole?
Thanks

 

[davetest]

I am unable to get a HDD with a previously good, working
installation of Win XP Pro on it to boot anymore.
I had Win98 on C (separate physical drive) and later put
Win XP Pro on D (separate physical drive). Ntdetect.com,
Ntldr & Boot.ini were all installed to the root of C by XP.
Unfortunately, I completely reformatted C before realizing
XP's ability to boot was contingent on entries in C's MBR
& root directory (my ultimate objective was to pull a copy
of D [XP] over to C after the reformat of C and make it my
operational O/S location from that point forward).
I can get into the Recovery Console from my XP install CD,
however, the 'bootcfg /rebuild' command ultimately failed,
initially, then I tried 'bootfix' - success, but, same
error on reboot. I tried creating a boot floppy with
Ntdetect.com, Ntldr & an appropriate Boot.ini file - same
error on reboot. Then I tried 'bootcfg /rebuild' again -
success, but, same error on reboot.
Can anyone help dig me out of this hole?
Thanks

Is the bios recognizing the harddrive? If that bit's not
right you wont get much further.
ntldr, boot.ini and ntdetect.com on the floppy,
and then booting from same, should bring up the boot.ini
menu, then control is passed to the harddrive after.
Did this happen? Was it a different error?

Dave

 

[Kevin]

-----Original Message-----

I am unable to get a HDD with a previously good, working
installation of Win XP Pro on it to boot anymore.
I had Win98 on C (separate physical drive) and later put
Win XP Pro on D (separate physical drive). Ntdetect.com,
Ntldr & Boot.ini were all installed to the root of C by XP.
Unfortunately, I completely reformatted C before realizing
XP's ability to boot was contingent on entries in C's MBR
& root directory (my ultimate objective was to pull a copy
of D [XP] over to C after the reformat of C and make it my
operational O/S location from that point forward).
I can get into the Recovery Console from my XP install CD,
however, the 'bootcfg /rebuild' command ultimately failed,
initially, then I tried 'bootfix' - success, but, same
error on reboot. I tried creating a boot floppy with
Ntdetect.com, Ntldr & an appropriate Boot.ini file - same
error on reboot. Then I tried 'bootcfg /rebuild' again -
success, but, same error on reboot.
Can anyone help dig me out of this hole?
Thanks

Is the bios recognizing the harddrive? If that bit's not
right you wont get much further.
ntldr, boot.ini and ntdetect.com on the floppy,
and then booting from same, should bring up the boot.ini
menu, then control is passed to the harddrive after.
Did this happen? Was it a different error?

Dave
.

Dave ... thanks for your help ... I am still puzzling over
this ...
Yes, the BIOS sees both physical HDD's.
I let XP Setup repair my existing installation on D (it
went through its' entire install routine and overwrote
something like 1900 files - to what extent this impacts
all my installed XP Hotfixes [and ?] I don't yet know) and
I also installed XP anew to C, just to be able to get to D.
Now, when booting from the C HDD, I get the boot.ini menu,
so, at least I can get to my previous installation of XP
on D.
However, I still cannot boot directly from the D HDD (by
choosing it from the BIOS boot menu) and I cannot get the
machine to display a boot.ini menu when booting from a
floppy with Ntdetect.com, Ntldr & Boot.ini on it.
I'd like to understand why so I can steer around this type
of problem in future.