Weird issue: XP won't boot from any drive except one!

E

eurosong

Geek Trainee
Hi all, I have a weird problem. Let me describe the situation.

For some time now, my Windows installation has become dodgy: video files keep stuttering, etc. I decided that the best thing to do would be a reinstall.

Now, I have three separate physical hard drives in use at the moment: two SATAs and one IDE. One SATA is partitioned, and Windows XP is installed on the first partition of that drive.

Instead of just reinstalling over the current installation, to be safe I decided to install another copy of XP first on one of the other drives. I've had enough operating system troubles in my time to teach me that it's always good to have a backup, and to take things one step at a time. Therefore I could keep my dodgy-but-workable installation available if anything went wrong. I decided to install again on a completely separate drive, not just another partition.

So - I booted from the CD, and went through the 40-minute installation sequence, after having chosen my IDE drive upon which to place the new installation of Windows. When the computer rebooted, it came up with the Windows selector screen (from boot.ini) - with the two versions of XP. I selected the second one - the new one - but then the screen just came up with a "Non-system disk" error.. just as if there wasn't an operating system on that drive in the first place. How odd.

I thought then, it might be come kind of issue due to the fact that the initial boot sector is on the first SATA, but then the Windows boot.ini is trying to redirect the booting to the IDE, and the numbering of the devices might not be correct. Or something. So then I tried to reinstall AGAIN - on my other SATA - while the first SATA was physically disconnected from the motherboard. I thought that this would then be treated as if I were installing Windows completely fresh and new - as the computer would not "know" that there was another old installation present, since that drive was disconnected. But again - after the installation sequence, the reboot produced the same error.

I went into the BIOS and carefully selected that drive to boot from.. to no avail.

When I reconnected my old SATA and re-instructed the BIOS to boot from that drive, then my old Windows booted as normal.

Can anyone shed any light on the reason why my computer only seems to want to boot from this one drive, and refuses to allow Windows to start on any other one?

Thanks.
 
hmm.....

Well i guess you should just run through the basics.

Did you turn off virus checking in CMOS before installing?
Have you made your primary partition active?

Did you install the initial working system or was it pre-installed?

From the error message it seems to me that the system can't find the system files in order to begin booting the system but i would still check the arc naming in BOOT.INI just in case although the virus checking in CMOS seems the most likely problem to me.
 
eurosong said:
My two other HDs are working just fine - not corrupted or anything. No, it's not a hardware fault: it's a configuration issue
Click to expand...
yes, i thin your right, however, i don't use XP but i've just used net to try & remind me, i think you need to boot the XP CD and enter the recovery console & log in to the install of XP you wish to fix & rebuild the boo.ini configuration filewithe the command
Code: 
bootcfg /rebuild
but before you issue that command, you need to change the attributes of boot.ini with
Code: 
attrib -h -s -r C:/boot.ini
this command makes boot.ini have the attributes non hidden (-h), non system & non read only, so, enter recovery console & give it the attrib command above then rename boot.ini to something like boot.old.ini with
Code: 
ren boot.ini boot.old.ini
then enter the bootcfg command above, and just for good measure type the command
Code: 
fixboot
and you should be able to reboot fine if you logged into th correct build of XP

BTW: please do not do this until someone else agrees with it as i am unsure it is correct, although i think it is but i would doubt my own name with XP
 
Tech 1709 said:
hmm.....

Well i guess you should just run through the basics.

Did you turn off virus checking in CMOS before installing?
Have you made your primary partition active?

Did you install the initial working system or was it pre-installed?

From the error message it seems to me that the system can't find the system files in order to begin booting the system but i would still check the arc naming in BOOT.INI just in case although the virus checking in CMOS seems the most likely problem to me.
Click to expand...

I installed the OS myself. I have decent experience in the ins and outs of these things: I just never came across this problem before.

What does CMOS virus checking do to stop the installation booting?

Thanks,


EuroSong
 
eurosong said:
What does CMOS virus checking do to stop the installation booting?
Click to expand...

Basically the virus checker in your CMOS is supposed to alert you any time software tries to write to your MBR, the point being to stop boot sector viruses at work. You don't see the warning during setup because the display is in graphics mode. Its an old problem common to many Windows versions. In these cases the installation is a dud almost immediately and you wont be a able to boot it. This could explain why your SATA and PATA drives both suffered the same problem.

However seeing as you installed the working version this seems a little doubtful, unless you've altered your CMOS settings but for what its worth it seems like a MBR problem to me.
 
I did all the steps suggested by Donkey42, but there's no luck.

I tried, as follows:

1) Wiped all old windows files and directories off my IDE drive
2) Disconnected both SATA drives
3) Booted from the Windows installation CD and installed onto the single IDE
4) Rebooted at the prompt (mid-installation - you know, where after Windows copies the required files initially, you reboot from the HD to continue the installation)
5) Just to be sure, went to my BIOS boot selector and selected the single HD to boot from
6) Got faced with the message:

"A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

7) Was stumped
8) Reconnected my SATAs, booted into my old dodgy Windows installation, double-checked that the IDE drive was a primary partition and did a checkdisk - no errors
9) Switched off the computer and again disconnected the SATAs
10) Booted from the Windows CD, went to Recovery Console and followed Donkey42's steps
11) Tried again - only to be faced with the same error message
12) Gave up, and decided to let the experts at hardwareforums have another go

So... does anyone have any more ideas at all?

Thanks.
 
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