SATA hard drive

[DVEllison]

I have a Dell PC with a Maxtor SATA 160GB hard drive that has crashed.
I bought twp 80GB Seagate drives. I was able to install the hard drives
using the Seagate Disc Wizard utility. The system can see both hard
drives but does not recognize the CD or DVD drive and I get an error
"NTLDR is missing". Any suggestions?

 

[Dave Patrick]

Was the operating system reinstalled or was this a data drive only? What was
the disk and partition arrangement before and after? Raid involved?

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[DVEllison]

The system would not boot to the old hard drive. This drive was removed
and replaced with two 80GB Seagate SATA drives. I used the Seagate
DiscWizard Starter Edition utility to setup the two new hard drives.
The utility allowed me to format and setup one drive for the operating
system and another drive as storage.

I have rebooted and looked at the PC setup and it shows the two hard
drives but it does not show the CD drive as being available as a boot
drive.

Is it possible that I need to go back and run the utility again to
replace the DDO?

 

[Dave Patrick]

What controller are the ROM drives connected to? Where there changes to the
channel the drives were connected to? If so you may need to review the drive
jumper placements and or tell cmos setup of the changes that were made. Your
mobo or drive controller manual may be of help here. You're correct in
getting this resolved before proceeding with the operating system install.

To do a clean install, boot the Windows XP install CD-Rom. Setup inspects
your computer's hardware configuration and then begins to install the setup
and driver files. When the Windows XP Professional screen appears, press
ENTER to set up Windows XP Professional.

(Note: If your drive controller is not natively supported then you'll want
to boot the Windows XP CD-Rom. Then *F6* very early and very important (at
setup is inspecting your system) in the setup to prevent drive controller
detection, and select S to specify additional drivers. Then later you'll be
prompted to insert the manufacturer supplied Windows XP driver for your
drive controller in drive "A")

Read the license agreement, and then press the F8 key to accept the terms of
the license agreement and continue the installation.

When the Windows XP Professional Setup screen appears, all the existing
partitions and the unpartitioned spaces are listed for each physical hard
disk. Use the ARROW keys to select the partitions Press D to delete an
existing partition, If you press D to delete an existing partition, you must
then press L (or press ENTER, and then press L if it is the System
partition) to confirm that you want to delete the partition. Repeat this
step for each of the existing partitions When all the partitions are deleted
press F3 to exit setup, (to avoid unexpected drive letter assignments with
your new install) then restart the pc then when you get to this point in
setup again select the unpartitioned space, and then press C to create a new
partition and specify the size (if required). Windows will by default use
all available space.

Be sure to apply SP2 or at least these two below to your new install before
connecting to any network. Internet included. (sasser, msblast)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...be-3b8e-4f30-8245-9e368d3cdb5a&displaylang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-043.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-049.mspx




--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect