HDD Booting Problem

[DiscoDave]

e hard drives:

1 x 80GB (Now spare, was used for Linux)
1 x 200GB (Spare, for downloads etc)
1 x 500GB (Primary hard disk has OS and applications installed on)

For some reason when I boot into Windows It has to look on my 80GB drive first. I took out my 80GB to put into another machine and couldn't get into Windows. it came up with a "DISK ERROR".

After that incident I put the HDD back in and put the boot sequence back again (80GB, then 500GB, then 200GB).



I'm guessing its because the 80GB hard drive is being labeled as system.

Does anyone know what I can do so that I can remote the 80GB and put the booting in the correct order?

Thanks

David

[shadd_]

take the 80 gig out and try this..

1. Restart your computer with the Windows XP Setup disk in the CDROM drive.
2. If you are prompted to press a key to start the computer from CDROM, do so quickly. Otherwise it may try to boot from the hard drive.
3. After a few minutes, you'll see a prompt to press the R key to start the Recovery Console.
4. When Recovery Console starts, it will prompt you to enter a number corresponding to the Windows XP installation that you need to repair. In most cases, you'll enter "1" (which will be the only choice). If you press ENTER without typing a number, Recovery Console will quit and restart your computer.
5. Enter your Administrator password. If you don't enter the correct password, you cannot continue.
6. At the Recovery Console command prompt, type fixmbr and then verify that you want to proceed.

[DiscoDave]

Tried that but with no luck.

Also tried fixboot.

[shadd_]

you may have to play with the jumper settings on the drives or recheck the boot order in bios.

are both drives on seperate cables? if yes remove the jumper completely on the drive you want to boot. this will set it as master. some drives are finicky when it comes to jumper settings.

[Foo]

I'd guess that your 80Gb drive contains the boot.ini file that points to the OS partition on your other drive.

you could manually see what's in the boot.ini on the 80Gb, then create a new boot.ini for the 'real' OS drive.

It's fairly straightforwards, they're just text files.

Don't alter the boot.ini on the 80Gb unit though or you might be left with no bootable drives. Just unplug the 80Gb to test your new boot.ini on the other drive.