Re: Can Only Boot with Boot CD in Drive

Paige Miller wrote:

On 10/5/2006 7:16 PM, John John wrote:

Paige Miller wrote:

On 10/5/2006 8:41 AM, John John wrote:

Paige Miller wrote:

On 10/4/2006 11:28 PM, Justin Case wrote:

I don't think you realize all that you have done. I believe you now have TWO installations of Windows, one on the 80G, and one on the 160G. The original apparently is corrupt. The boot files remained there when you reinstalled to the wrong (the 80G) drive. Therefore the 160G boots.
[Rightclick My Computer. Choose Manage. Under Storage in the left pane, click Disk management. Which drive says "System", which says "Active" ("Boot"), etc. in the right pane? (This is the Disk SnapIn Tool, and may cause you to reinstall everything, if used to make changes without proper Knowledge.)




Currently, the D: drive (the 80gig drive that used to be my C: drive) is listed as Boot, while the C: drive (the 160gig drive that used to be my D: drive) is listed as system.

As of Now, ANY programs installed with the first Windows install are pointing to the wrong drive, because when you installed the 2nd Windows, THAT became the C: drive according to Windows. So ANY/ALL programs not reinstalled are skewed, and any leftover parts are, too.
Best bet: total reinstall of entire system.(if it was me)
To make Photoshop work (possibly), as is: replicate the path to the the library with empty folders on the D: drive, and copy the final library folder at the end of the path.
That is: If program's path says D:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Library, open D:\Program Files and just make a New>folder named Adobe, make a folder inside it named Photoshop, then copy and paste the library folder inside of that. May work; don't know what all else you've reinstalled, or haven't.
I'd start over.




To start over, do I need to erase these system files from one of my drives? Specifically, do I need to get rid of (or move to the other drive) NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI?

When I insert the Recovery disk to re-install windows, it always refers to my drives backwards ... in other words, the original C: drive (80gig) was always referred to by this program as my D: drive. I'm sure this is part of the confusion that I am having.

You are definitely correct about Photoshop Album, but I want my data files on a different drive from my Windows installation, just in case I ever have to do a re-install.



Place the drive on which you want to install Windows at the Master position on the Primary IDE controller. Keep the other drive(s) OUT of the machine until you have Windows installed properly and up and running, these other drives can be brought online after you install Windows. That will avoid mix ups and errors like the one you experienced. Just be sure to place the Windows drive at the position as I said earlier. Format the drive and reinstall Windows properly. Once you are satisfied that Windows is properly installed and running properly shut down the computer and install your other drive(s).

After installing the other drive and BEFORE you reboot Windows start the computer with a BootItNG diskette. http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html This is a fully functional 30 day trial version. Following the instruction from the site above create a boot diskette. DO NOT INSTALL BootItNG! It will work from a diskette boot, like a Windows 9x DOS boot diskette, just hit Escape or click cancel and it will tell you that it's entering "Maintenance Mode" (or something like that). Once there remove the "Active" flag from any partitions on the second hard drive. BE CAREFUL! Don't mix up your drives and don't remove the active flag on the Windows System Partition! Once done remove the BootItNG diskette and reboot the computer to your Windows Installation.

If the computer doesn't boot properly, you stuck the drives in the wrong place or the Master/Slave jumpers are wrong. Just make sure that the Windows installation is on partition 1 on HDD0, and that this is the drive set to boot in the BIOS.

John

John,

Thank you, this is very helpful. I might still decide to re-install Windows again to get things running properly, or I might not. It is a lot of work.

However, I don't know my way around the inside of the computer well. When you say "Place the drive on which you want to install Windows at the Master position on the Primary IDE controller", I'm not really sure I know how to do that. The computer arrived new with the C: drive on the third IDE controller, and my D: drive as the master (and only) drive on the primary IDE controller. I have no idea why they did that, and right now I have no idea how to move things around as you instructed so that the drive I want to be my C: drive as the master on the primary IDE controller. Can you help?


There is only 2 IDE controllers on motherboards. Unless you have an IDE controller card I don't see where this third IDE controller comes from. Maybe you have SATA instead of EIDE drives? Does the drive and data cable look like these with wide fat connectors: http://www.buildeasypc.com/hw/howto/insthdd.htm Or do the cables look like this (SATA): http://www.satagear.com/SATA_Cables.html ?

John


John,

When I boot the computer, and go into the BIOS setup, it tells me that the 80gig HD that has my Windows installation is the "Third IDE Master". That's not my interpretation ... that's the exact wording in the BIOS setup. The 160 gig HD is listed as the First IDE Master.

As far as what the cables look like, I won't have time to open the case and look tonight. That's a job for when I have more time (maybe tomorrow).

Thanks for your help, I really would like to understand what is going on and how to fix it, but I'm not going to try re-installing Windows again until I'm sure I understand this, otherwise I will most likely spend hours only to wind up right back where I am now.

Quick update ... I just looked at the invoice, and the invoice clearly lists both hard disk drives as ATA or SATA. So how do I move them so that they are in the right place?

Ok, this is easy to do. Open the computer and look at your hard drives and just follow the data cables to the motherboard and switch them places! Now look in the BIOS and (hopefully) the 80GB drive will be the "First IDE Master" and the 160 one will be third.

While your Windows installation will still all be accessible on the drive, the integrity of the installation will be completely destroyed. You will have to reinstall Windows. Make yourself a startup diskette and see if it works to start the switched drive. See here: http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/ You might need the SATA drivers on a diskette to install Windows, the F6 thing.

You may not need to use the BootItNG utility, but I think you should leave the other drive unplugged until after you install Windows.

John
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