trying to boot from previous dual boot setup

[edzillion]

Here is the situation thus far:
I originally had xp pro installed on my c: drive (IDE) and finally got a copy of 64bit xp, which I installed on a new hard drive, drive E: (SATA). I had a dual boot setup to select which OS to load. Since then I cleared out all the relevant data and want to boot directly off my new drive, straight into 64bit xp.

If I remove my original C: drive and reboot, I get the boot menu with the same options. If I choose 64bit xp then I get the error:

"windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem, could not read from the selected boot disk".

I booted up off the 64bit xp cd and went into the recovery console. I tried "bootcfg /rebuild" which gave some error or other, and then "expand d:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ c:\windows\system32" which gave an error too.

Is there a way I can wipe the boot menu and solely boot from the new drive into xp64?

Thanks for your time,
Ed.

 

[rvnguy]

As you orig had a dual boot from the IDE, this is where pertinent details were stored. The SATA was never installed as the main boot drive, only as secondary.

A repair install on the SATA might correct this.

How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[edzillion]

thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately I dont get the repair option when I boot off my xp64 cd. Had a look around about this problem and noticed this thread (

http://www.mcse.ms/archive65-2004-2-373494.html

) detailing the same problem.

He suggests to boot into recovery console and use bootcfg to repair the boot.ini. I tried first to run bootcfg /scan to search for installations. Gave me the error:
"failed to succesfully scan disks for windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system"

This is definitely NOT the case.
I also ran bootcfg /list which wouldnt run, and then tried FIXBOOT which said "boot sector successfully fixed" or something. I couldnt find the boot.ini file anywhere...

I still dont have the repair option when installing xp64 (yes this is the same cd which I used to install it) but if I try to boot directly off the drive I now get "NTLDR is missing" which I didnt get before.
Perhaps I can expand the ntldr file off the cd? Which one is it for xp64?

Regards,
Ed.

 

[rvnguy]

Did you look at the link?

When you begin from the cd, select intstall, win then scans for an install of win, you should be prompted as to if you want to repair the current install or install a fresh copy.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[firewolfrl]

I know exactly what happened. you have a reverse situation of this post:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1176891

what you have going on is you installed xp (64) in a second drive that was E:/
The BIOS was setup to see the SATA drive as HD1 and the IDE as HD0 (and boots from the SATA) so when you did the new install of XP (64) it created a Boot.ini and setup the the Master Boot Record on the SATA drive to reflect as Drive E:\ and this depeded on the IDE C:\ partition remaining as an Active partition. so in affect you can boot the IDE drive without the SATA installed but you can't boot the SATA without the IDE installed.

When you remove the IDE drive this turns the Bios to refer the SATA drive as HD0. the Boot.ini refers to the SATA as a second drive and the registry sees the SATA as E:\ and the MBR wants the drive as default C:\.

SO you are FUBAR

The fix is to remove the IDE drive and Zero out the SATA drive with the manufacturer utility for the drive. PowerMAX from Maxtor will work too because it can ZERO the MBR and the end of the drive where the secondary boot record is kept on a NTFS drive.

Format is not good enough.

Then reinstall the XP (64) on the SATA drive.


good luck

 

[firewolfrl]

I forgot to add.
I always recommend that an OS be installed with only ONE drive in the system. it sure saves alot of headache
and use a good boot manager for more than one OS. (I use XOSL)

http://www.google.com/search?q=boot+manager