Help Pse - HDD Boot drama!!!!!!

Thanks for looking!!

Here's the situation. I am running

XP Pro (SP1)
Abit NT7 Mobo
Ath 2000+
Radeon 9800 Pro

I have had a perfect system, which has had no problems. I have a removable
HDD, which I have used for backups, data storage, etc. Recently, I deleted
a load of stuff from this removable drive - still no dramas - but when I try
to boot WITHOUT that drive in its bay I get

NTLDR is missing

This seems strange as my system is defintitely booting from my other drive.
I have gone for the newbie approach of completely reinstalling my system
(without the removable drive) and I now have a perfectly running system,
with all my software reinstalled, etc. The issue is that I want to stick my
removable drive back in but I am concerned that I will have problems again.
What I really want to do is format the removable drive and start afresh but
I am not clear on how to do this. I tried originally to do this using
Partitioin Magic - and thats where the problems started. It is a SATA HDD -
and I have to load SiL SATA drivers when I reinstall windows.

Is there a clever way in which I could switch off - insert the drive - boot
to either a disk or a prompt - and format that drive ? I used to be able to
format anything with my trusty DOS 3.1 disk - but that was a long time ago.
Is there another option to reconfigure the boot in the BIOS so that it does
not look at the removable drive (bearing in mind that my system is currently
working PERFECTLY without this removable drive).

Your help, guidance and/or laughter will all be hugely appreciated!!

Thanks

Nick


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: WIN XP Pro OVER WIN @K Pro?
    ... > Win2K Pro, you can avoid all the hassles of formatting ... Clean install as a dual boot, ... it sounds like I am going to have to go the FORMAT ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Compact Flash Boot Problem
    ... I'd recommend you to format the CF on the target PC under *DOS*. ... I have a System with XP Pro and XPe on a SATA drive. ... XP Embedded (Compact Flash) - NTFS ... When I disconnect my SATA drive I need to boot from my ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded)
  • Re: When ramdisk boot formats NTFS CF, it wont boot
    ... Building the CF on XP Pro with diskpart/format command lines is OK. ... I still cannot get format command line to create a bootable CF when running ... But, it doesn't boot. ... And the diskpart program is the same version on both XP Pro and XPe. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.embedded)
  • Re: Two operating systems on one partition
    ... format and clean install is your only option. ... option to boot into both then you may only need to simply edit your boot.ini ... > computer that came with XP Pro. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: REINSTALLING X P PRO
    ... > reinstalling my Windows XP pro ... Boot from CD, partition the drive, answer any questions it has. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)