Two C: drives Conflicting?

[Under the Sun]

Hi,

My system has recently had a lot of problems, which I failed to solve
after trying everything I could think of. Since I had just ordered a
new hard drive anyway, I decided to do a fresh installation of Windows.
Here's my problem:

I wanted the new installation to be on "C:" so I disconnected my
original drive during the Windows installation. Now, if I try to boot
with both of the drives connected (they are SATA), I see the boot
loader option as expected, except that either choice brings me to the
Welcome Screen, but freezes at the screen right before the User names
show up. To clarify, both installations were of Windows XP. I have some
suspicion that it might be the drive letters, since I purposefully
disconnected the older drive to bypass the fact that Windows won't
allow a user to change the drive letter of a system volume, as far as I
know, but that doesn't sound quite right either.

Does anyone have any ideas what I should do to fix this?
I don't actually care about having the original drive be a system
partition, I just want to ensure that the data will be there. I've been
hesitant about trying to change the MBR with fixboot or fixmbr for that
reason.

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

you probably should have had the original hd hooked up as well and as a
slave. then when you installed windows the cd would have given you the
option to repair you previous installation, eg old hd, or install a new
windows on the new drive. afterwards windows would have created a dual /
multi boot menu for you.
you may still have this option if you connect both drives up to your pc and
reload the windows cd and carefully select the options it provides.

you may have the option to alter the boot.ini file and include a secondary
boot line for the old hard drive. you can google on how to make a dual boot
menu, or something to the affect. you can see the boot ini file via run >
msconfig > boot ini tab the old harddrive if connected as a slave would
appear to be recognized as disk 1, while the new drive that is currently
booting would be disk 0


if you made a disk image of the old hd, you may have the option to restore
the image onto the new harddrive. then use the windows cd to repair that
windows, since there will be unsyncronize files between the odl harddrive
image and the new drive.....

 

[Under the Sun]

you probably should have had the original hd hooked up as well and as a
slave. then when you installed windows the cd would have given you the
option to repair you previous installation, eg old hd, or install a new
windows on the new drive. afterwards windows would have created a dual /
multi boot menu for you.
you may still have this option if you connect both drives up to your pc and
reload the windows cd and carefully select the options it provides.

you may have the option to alter the boot.ini file and include a secondary
boot line for the old hard drive. you can google on how to make a dual boot
menu, or something to the affect. you can see the boot ini file via run >
msconfig > boot ini tab the old harddrive if connected as a slave would
appear to be recognized as disk 1, while the new drive that is currently
booting would be disk 0


if you made a disk image of the old hd, you may have the option to restore
the image onto the new harddrive. then use the windows cd to repair that
windows, since there will be unsyncronize files between the odl harddrive
image and the new drive.....

Well, my problem was that no attempts at repairing the original Windows
installation led to a complete fix of the problem -- I had decided I
wanted to start with a clean installation anyway.

If I connect both drives at the same time, I do get the
bootloader/mutli-boot menu, but as I said, either choice leads to the
problem of a Welcome/Log-on screen that is frozen and never loads with
the users.

I don't understand your master/slave comments. These are SATA drives,
and I was under the impression that the SATA controller treated them
individually and didn't differentiate between "master" and "slave"?

Thanks for the comments, but I could still use some more help

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Well, my problem was that no attempts at repairing the original Windows
installation led to a complete fix of the problem -- I had decided I
wanted to start with a clean installation anyway.

If I connect both drives at the same time, I do get the
bootloader/mutli-boot menu, but as I said, either choice leads to the
problem of a Welcome/Log-on screen that is frozen and never loads with
the users.

I don't understand your master/slave comments. These are SATA drives,
and I was under the impression that the SATA controller treated them
individually and didn't differentiate between "master" and "slave"?

Thanks for the comments, but I could still use some more help

The SATA HDs boot just like the PATA HDs. The only difference
is that there is no Master/Slave settings as they're all on separate
cables and that the default HD boot order doesn't involve Master/
Slave settings.

There's nothing wrong with having 2 OSes each thinking that their
own partition is "Local Disk (C". The running OS just refers to the
other partition as "Local Disk (D". It happens all the time when a
partition "C:" containing an OS is cloned - each OS calls its own
partition "C:" and the other partition "D:", and "D:" is still just as
accessible to the OS running in "C:" no matter if its the clone or the
original partition.

So as not waste our time with guessing, please list the contents
of the file C:\boot.ini in both partitions, and tell us if both partitions
are marked "active" and if both partitions are Primary partitions
(as opposed to Extended partitions). Also tell us if your BIOS
enables you to set the HD boot order (i.e. which HD's MBR gets
control at boot time), and whether your motherboard or expansion
card controller handles just SATA HDs or a mixture of SATA and PATA.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Under the Sun]

The SATA HDs boot just like the PATA HDs. The only difference
is that there is no Master/Slave settings as they're all on separate
cables and that the default HD boot order doesn't involve Master/
Slave settings.

There's nothing wrong with having 2 OSes each thinking that their
own partition is "Local Disk (C". The running OS just refers to the
other partition as "Local Disk (D". It happens all the time when a
partition "C:" containing an OS is cloned - each OS calls its own
partition "C:" and the other partition "D:", and "D:" is still just as
accessible to the OS running in "C:" no matter if its the clone or the
original partition.

So as not waste our time with guessing, please list the contents
of the file C:\boot.ini in both partitions, and tell us if both partitions
are marked "active" and if both partitions are Primary partitions
(as opposed to Extended partitions). Also tell us if your BIOS
enables you to set the HD boot order (i.e. which HD's MBR gets
control at boot time), and whether your motherboard or expansion
card controller handles just SATA HDs or a mixture of SATA and PATA.

*TimDaniels*

Okay, sorry I got sidetracked and wasn't able to respond for so long,
but here is what info I could come up with.

The new hard drive which has the fresh installation of WinXP on it has
the following boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I can't tell you what the boot.ini on the original hard drive has
because that is the problem I am having, I can't seem to gain access to
the contents of that hard drive. I can probably get to it from the
recovery console, so I'll hopefully manage that and post that later.

My BIOS does let me choose a boot order. Currently, it doesn't make a
difference since the problem is that not only can I not get Windows to
load properly on the original hard drive on its own, but if I connect
both it and my new HD, both exhibit the same symptoms.

The motherboard I have is an Intel D915GAG (based on the 915G chipset).
It has 4 SATA interfaces and one PATA interface. Right now, only the
new hard drive is connected to one of the SATA interfaces and two
optical drives are on the IDE chain of the PATA interface.

If there's anymore information that would be useful in figuring out
what I need to do to fix this, I'll do my best to provide it.

Thanks, again.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

please list the contents
of the file C:\boot.ini in both partitions, and tell us if both partitions
are marked "active" and if both partitions are Primary partitions
(as opposed to Extended partitions). Also tell us if your BIOS
enables you to set the HD boot order (i.e. which HD's MBR gets
control at boot time), and whether your motherboard or expansion
card controller handles just SATA HDs or a mixture of SATA and PATA.

*TimDaniels*

Okay, sorry I got sidetracked and wasn't able to respond for so long,
but here is what info I could come up with.

The new hard drive which has the fresh installation of WinXP on it has
the following boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I can't tell you what the boot.ini on the original hard drive has
because that is the problem I am having, I can't seem to gain
access to the contents of that hard drive. I can probably get to
it from the recovery console, so I'll hopefully manage that and
post that later.

My BIOS does let me choose a boot order. Currently, it doesn't make a
difference since the problem is that not only can I not get Windows to
load properly on the original hard drive on its own, but if I connect
both it and my new HD, both exhibit the same symptoms.

The motherboard I have is an Intel D915GAG (based on the 915G chipset).
It has 4 SATA interfaces and one PATA interface. Right now, only the
new hard drive is connected to one of the SATA interfaces and two
optical drives are on the IDE chain of the PATA interface.

If there's anymore information that would be useful in figuring out
what I need to do to fix this, I'll do my best to provide it.

It appears that the boot.ini file contents that you supplied were once
for a dual-boot situation judging by the non-zero timeout value.
But what about the other information that was requested (10 days
ago) - is the partition that contains the boot.ini/ntldr/ntdetect.com files
marked "active"? Is that partition a Primary partition? How many
partitions are there on the WinXP hard drive? Is the WINDOWS
file actually in partition 1?

You say that you can control the boot order in the BIOS. Is that
the *HD* boot order or just the boot order (which prioritizes
devices other than HDs plus HDs as a group). With the *HD*
boot order, have you put the SATA drives ahead of the PATA drives?
The BIOS may be trying to boot from the CD (i.e. PATA) drive.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Under the Sun]

:
If I connect both drives at the same time, I do get the
bootloader/mutli-boot menu, but as I said, either choice
leads to the problem of a Welcome/Log-on screen that
is frozen and never loads with the users.

please list the contents
of the file C:\boot.ini in both partitions, and tell us if both partitions
are marked "active" and if both partitions are Primary partitions
(as opposed to Extended partitions). Also tell us if your BIOS
enables you to set the HD boot order (i.e. which HD's MBR gets
control at boot time), and whether your motherboard or expansion
card controller handles just SATA HDs or a mixture of SATA and PATA.

*TimDaniels*

Okay, sorry I got sidetracked and wasn't able to respond for so long,
but here is what info I could come up with.

The new hard drive which has the fresh installation of WinXP on it has
the following boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I can't tell you what the boot.ini on the original hard drive has
because that is the problem I am having, I can't seem to gain
access to the contents of that hard drive. I can probably get to
it from the recovery console, so I'll hopefully manage that and
post that later.

My BIOS does let me choose a boot order. Currently, it doesn't make a
difference since the problem is that not only can I not get Windows to
load properly on the original hard drive on its own, but if I connect
both it and my new HD, both exhibit the same symptoms.

The motherboard I have is an Intel D915GAG (based on the 915G chipset).
It has 4 SATA interfaces and one PATA interface. Right now, only the
new hard drive is connected to one of the SATA interfaces and two
optical drives are on the IDE chain of the PATA interface.

If there's anymore information that would be useful in figuring out
what I need to do to fix this, I'll do my best to provide it.

It appears that the boot.ini file contents that you supplied were once
for a dual-boot situation judging by the non-zero timeout value.
But what about the other information that was requested (10 days
ago) - is the partition that contains the boot.ini/ntldr/ntdetect.com files
marked "active"? Is that partition a Primary partition? How many
partitions are there on the WinXP hard drive? Is the WINDOWS
file actually in partition 1?

You say that you can control the boot order in the BIOS. Is that
the *HD* boot order or just the boot order (which prioritizes
devices other than HDs plus HDs as a group). With the *HD*
boot order, have you put the SATA drives ahead of the PATA drives?
The BIOS may be trying to boot from the CD (i.e. PATA) drive.

*TimDaniels*

Yeah. Sorry about the 10-day delay. All the more glad that you are
still trying to help though. Don't know how I missed that info.

In addition to the hard drive with the boot.ini with the contents I
listed, I assume that the other hard drive is also marked as active -
as I believe it was before I removed it and installed XP on the new
hard drive (also marked active). Both of these partitions are primary
partitions (I didn't know extended partitions could be marked active).

This new hard drive that works on its own (and only when it's on its
own) has three partitions on it (ie. one active primary and two logical
drives in the extended partition). The old hard drive has two
partitions - I believe both may be primary? One is the system
partitions and the other is a manufacturer's recovery partition
(possibly something important I should've mentioned earlier).

I do not think it is trying to boot from the CD because
1) No bootable disc is in either of the optical drives, and
2) XP loads to the "Welcome" screen, but just freezes there and never
displays any user login prompts.

My BIOS does allow me to set boot order on a device basis, and yes, I
always have the working (ie. the one that works on its own and only on
its own) hard drive at the top of the list.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

How can I say this gently.... S'long.

*TimDaniels*