XP won't boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Kevin
  • Start date Start date
K

Kevin

I just finished removing a non-System hard disk from my
system (running XP-Home) which has a total of 4 hard disks
and replaced it with another. The System was not on either
of these disks and the System used to boot just fine
before this operation. When starting up, I may have
forgotten to check the BIOS to make sure that it was
pointed at the System disk to boot but regardless, I got
the following error message:
"Reboot and select proper boot device"
and after trying many things figured out that the System
is unable to boot from the System disk for some reason.
I've tried making the System drive the only Boot device in
the CMOS and every combination of hard drive, cd drive,
floppy disk. Always the same result.
I've been able to start from the XP CD and run Recovery.
From there I see that all the partitions are still in
place on the System drive (each disk just has one
partition) but no matter what I do I can't make the main
disk boot any more. I've tried FIXBOOT and FIXMBR on the
C: drive (the one with XP on it - the only OpSys detected
by Recovery) and these had no effect.
I have a Ghost image of an early, working drive but I
don't really want to back up that far and lose what's on
the disk now if I don't have to (I know...keep current
backups and this is not an issue! Lesson learned).
TIA,
Kevin
 
If you boot to xp cd,select repair,type:bootcfg /?
Youll probably want to type:bootcfg /repair to execute.
 
OK, tried it but no results

Also looked a little further into this and the ball seems to be dropping somewhere between the POST and the Windows startup
BIOS sees all the drives. XP is loaded onto an SATA drive but that was not an issue before since this system has run off that drive for a couple months. When booting from the XP CD and going to Recovery, all the drives are "seen". So...both the BIOS and XP can see the drive with XP on it. Recovery even recognizes the existence of an XP installation. I've tried to do FIXMBR and FIXBOOT from Recovery and it still will not boot from the hard drive even when it's the only drive in the Boot Priority list in BIOS

Leads me to think that somehow the partition on the drive was changed to no longer be a Boot partition. Doesn't FIXMBR or FIXBOOT "fix" this

What happens to the XP installation (and all the other data) on that disk if I use DISKPART from Recovery and somehow try to make it a BOOT partition again? Can I even do that

T ever so much IA
Kevi

----- Andrew Eckrich wrote: ----

If you boot to xp cd,select repair,type:bootcfg /
Youll probably want to type:bootcfg /repair to execute.
 
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