Unable to boot from HD, otherwise drive is working

[pford-]

Greetings,

My problem is that I have an 80G HD NTFS format that I cannot boot
from. It used to be the C drive that was working until I tried to
"upgrade" by cloning it to a larger drive using Symantec Ghost (from
SystemWorks 2004). When I ran Ghost, the system attempted to rebooted
but failed. I installed XP home ed. onto the other drive and I can see
all the data on the old C drive, which includes the WinXP SP2 files,
but I cannot boot from it. I have used the Recovery procedure from
the XP CD installation disk, running bootcfg, fixboot, fixmbr, and
systemroot.

I don't recall the error message, but it something about not a valid
system disk.

So my questions are:

1) Is there a way to reinstall boot track information to make this
disk bootable without affecting the data?

2) Can I clone/copy the data to the drive that will boot without
losing any functions, if so, how? Will a simple copying of all the
files and directories suffice?

3) Should I do a re-install (upgrade OS) from the original XP SP1? (I
am currently trying to create an XP SP2 bootable CD. I was able to
create a slipstream copy on the hard disk, but when I ran it, it just
re-installed it on the current C drive, not the old one.) Can this be
done simply without losing the registry? I know it can be done, but I
don't want to do the copying of the recovery files, regediting, etc.


BTW, my floppy disk drive appears to be dead, so any methods that
require booting from a floppy are out for now.

Regards,

Pat Ford

 

[db]

i would run a repair installation
with your win setup cd. This may help
"syncronize" your cloned o.s. to the
new location/drive.

as far as slipstreaming and the boot
disk issue, i think that "ultimate boot cd"
is very good option to use for this.

- db
Greetings,

My problem is that I have an 80G HD NTFS format that I cannot boot
from. It used to be the C drive that was working until I tried to
"upgrade" by cloning it to a larger drive using Symantec Ghost (from
SystemWorks 2004). When I ran Ghost, the system attempted to rebooted
but failed. I installed XP home ed. onto the other drive and I can see
all the data on the old C drive, which includes the WinXP SP2 files,
but I cannot boot from it. I have used the Recovery procedure from
the XP CD installation disk, running bootcfg, fixboot, fixmbr, and
systemroot.

I don't recall the error message, but it something about not a valid
system disk.

So my questions are:

1) Is there a way to reinstall boot track information to make this
disk bootable without affecting the data?

2) Can I clone/copy the data to the drive that will boot without
losing any functions, if so, how? Will a simple copying of all the
files and directories suffice?

3) Should I do a re-install (upgrade OS) from the original XP SP1? (I
am currently trying to create an XP SP2 bootable CD. I was able to
create a slipstream copy on the hard disk, but when I ran it, it just
re-installed it on the current C drive, not the old one.) Can this be
done simply without losing the registry? I know it can be done, but I
don't want to do the copying of the recovery files, regediting, etc.


BTW, my floppy disk drive appears to be dead, so any methods that
require booting from a floppy are out for now.

Regards,

Pat Ford

 

[AJR]

Have not read closely your post - however XP must boot from the active
partition on drive 0 (99.9% it's "C")

To boot from another HD requires boot.ini modification or a third party
boot manager.

 

[pford-]

I cannot get this drive to boot even if it is the only HD on. I have
edited the boot.ini file already.

I will look into boot managers.

THX