Why won't cloned new drive boot up?

[Paul Soderman]

I'm beefing up the hard drive in a Dell; got a 60GB to replace the 40GB
it came with. I don't need much more storage than this. Anyway, I've
already used Norton Ghost to clone the old disk to the new one in an
external USB box and the clone appears to be of the same type and size
as
the original; however, when I installed it in the Dell and tried to
start up, I got the following message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional
information."

Thinking that maybe the master/slave settings needed to be adjusted, I
played with them to no avail. Although the new drive is a Maxtor and
the old a Western Digital, I've confirmed that the new one is correctly
set for "Master", without any "Slave" being present.

Is this a simple problem where the
computer "remembers" that another drive had been present or installed
and some startup setting needs to be adjusted, even though the contents
of the
new and old drive should be identical? Thanks for any suggestions or
help!
Paul

 

[Rich Barry]

Paul, it might be just a simple matter of making the drive active using
Ghost or even Fdisk.

 

[Jim]

Paul,

The new Maxtor should jumper should be set to be the master.
If you plan to also use the WD remove the WD jumper completely.
The new drive also must bet set as the active (boot) drive.
Also if the old drive is connected Windows may see the old drive's Windows
directory and cause issues. It did with me in the past so I deleted my old
drives boot (C partition using one of the tools on the Ghost restoration
CD before booting from the new drive. It was a hassle with the drive jumpers
and took several tries before all was well.

Jim

 

[Paul Soderman]

I'm unsure as to just what must be done in order to make the new drive
"active" so as to be the boot drive; could you point me in the right
direction? I will not be keeping the old drive in the Dell, although I
may use it as a backup for another computer and will erase and reformat
it before so using it.

 

[Rich Barry]

Paul, I still use a floppy Win98 Bootdisk. You can get one at
www.bootdisk.com Set the floppy drive as first boot device in
Bios. Insert disk and type fdisk at the A:\ A:\fdisk Hit Enter and say
Yes to the first message. Then you will get a Menu
Just follow the instructions. http://www.pcabusers.net/fdisk.html

 

[Paul Soderman]

Rich:
Thanks much for the advice!
I'm using XP Home (with the SP 2 stuff recently installed). I don't
know if a Win98 disk would be usable, but if so I'm willing to give it
a try. Would similar instructions work if I tried to boot via the
Windows install CD in that drive, making the CD drive the first boot
drive and then following messages as to how to get the C drive/new disk
set to "active"?
Thanks again for the patience and help!
Paul

 

[mdp]

I'm beefing up the hard drive in a Dell; got a 60GB to replace the
40GB it came with. I don't need much more storage than this. Anyway,
I've already used Norton Ghost to clone the old disk to the new one
in an external USB box and the clone appears to be of the same type
and size as
the original; however, when I installed it in the Dell and tried to
start up, I got the following message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional
information."

Thinking that maybe the master/slave settings needed to be adjusted, I
played with them to no avail. Although the new drive is a Maxtor and
the old a Western Digital, I've confirmed that the new one is
correctly set for "Master", without any "Slave" being present.

Is this a simple problem where the
computer "remembers" that another drive had been present or installed
and some startup setting needs to be adjusted, even though the
contents of the
new and old drive should be identical? Thanks for any suggestions or
help!
Paul

Dell often puts the OS on a second partition using the first partition for
recovery or diagnostic purposes. For XP, the file boot.ini must reflect
that. For example, in my system (from Dell) with XP Pro, boot.ini is:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


Note the partition(2). If you copied the partition onto a disk where
there's only one partition, double check the file boot.in in the root
directory to see if it's something like:

[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
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

You can do/edit this in DOS (e.g. boot from a floppy) but you'll have to
unhide the file.

 

[Newt Ownsquare]

You may want to revisit your jumper pin setting on the drive. You previously
stated, "I've confirmed that the new one is correctly set for "Master", without
any "Slave" being present." In my experience this is an incorrect procedure. If
you don't have a slave drive installed on that channel, then the drive should be
configured as a standalone drive, not a Master. For W/D drives there is a
specific setting for this configuration, I can only assume that Maxtor is
similar.

You should be able to find the proper jumper pin setting for your Maxtor drive
here:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...8/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Product Support

--
Hope this helps,
Newt


| Rich:
| Thanks much for the advice!
| I'm using XP Home (with the SP 2 stuff recently installed). I don't
| know if a Win98 disk would be usable, but if so I'm willing to give it
| a try. Would similar instructions work if I tried to boot via the
| Windows install CD in that drive, making the CD drive the first boot
| drive and then following messages as to how to get the C drive/new disk
| set to "active"?
| Thanks again for the patience and help!
| Paul
|

 

[Rich Barry]

Paul, I checked the Recovery Console in WinXP and it doesnt have fdisk. I
was thinking that all my OS's are formatted
Fat32. I think that's why I don't have a problem using a Win98 floppy
disk. I never tried it with a NTFS formatted drive.
Though I might be talking about apples and oranges here. Give the floppy a
try.

 

[Bob I]

That would be DiskPart not fdisk

Paul, I checked the Recovery Console in WinXP and it doesnt have fdisk. I
was thinking that all my OS's are formatted
Fat32. I think that's why I don't have a problem using a Win98 floppy
disk. I never tried it with a NTFS formatted drive.
Though I might be talking about apples and oranges here. Give the floppy a
try.

 

[David Vair]

Check in the Dell's BIOS to be sure it is seeing the new hard drive correctly.