Re: Dual Boot drive failure, add boot info

The boot disk worked, unfortunately I had tried the other suggestion of a
windows repair, so when it booted, it started installing windows. Will see
what happens now I guess.

"John John" wrote:

Put it as it was and try the floppy boot diskette. Because the
operating system was installed when another active partition (System
Partition) was present the files NTDETECT.COM, ntldr and boot.ini were
installed on the first hard drive and the rest of the Windows files were
installed on the second hard drive. At that time the drive enumeration
was done and the Windows installation was enumerated on a drive other
than "C". That cannot be changed, by trying to remove the first drive
and replacing it with the second drive you are in fact trying to make
the second drive into the System drive where NTDETECT.COM, ntldr and
boot.ini will reside and at the same time change the drive letter
assignment from "Whatever letter" to "C" for the Windows installation.
That cannot work, the windows drive has to maintain its drive letter
assignment if you want it to boot and operate properly. If the first
(System) drive is dead you have to replace it with another drive, make
it bootable and place the NTDETECT.COM, ntldr and boot.ini files on it.
The boot diskette can act as the system drive providing that you do
not change the hard drives around, leave the dead drive there for now
and see if you can boot with the diskette.

John

Josh wrote:

Heh, ok will try putting back how it was. Already moved it around a bit and
tried adding boot info to it. Nothing I cant undo I dont think, other than
the windows repair that someone suggested, no idea what that did, or how to
undo it, but it didnt help whatever it did.

"John John" wrote:


PS. Try the diskette boot but leave the failed drive where it was!
Don't change the drive arrangement or else the boot may fail or go in a
continuous reboot loop. Being that the operating system was installed
on a different drive than the system drive it will have to remain as
such unless you reinstall the operating system from scratch.

John

John John wrote:


Try booting it with a floppy boot diskette:

http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/

Let us know if you can start it with the floppy boot.

John

Josh wrote:


So.. I had WinXP Pro installed on a drive in my computer. I had old
stuff from school installed on it that I couldnt easilly save off or
install on a new system, was like alpha/beta stuff. So I installed a
new HD and added an OS (winxp pro again) to that, making a dual boot
system. As I understand, most of the boot info was on the original
drive, and is thus not added to the new drive (or I chose that as an
installation option, I'm not sure, regardless, it's not there).

Now my original drive has crashed leaving me with no HD that is
bootable, though I have one with a fully operational OS, if I can just
get it to boot.

Is there any KB article on this or can anyone help me? I've searched
around but not found anything directly applicable to this. I'd rather
not mess anything up by trying out fdisk /mbr type stuff unless I'm
sure thats whats needed. Surely someone out there has had this issue
before, or removed the 'main' HD in a dual boot system?

I tried to contact MS help, but they ask for a PID, and when I click
"where do I find my PID" they tell me to run stuff on windows....
only, if I could run windows, I wouldnt be there asking for support!! :\

Please help,
Thanks,
Josh


.

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