Windows XP boot partition problem

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lucifir

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Ok, just got a new SATA drive and copied the existing windows partition across and used windows recovery to get that working. However, the new SATA drive is set as the system partition and my old IDE drive as the boot partition.
So windows requires the IDE drive in order to startup. How do I change this so that my SATA drive is the boot and system partition??

Thanx
 
boot from the windows cd, on the first menu that comes up choose Repair windows installation via recovery console (or something to that effect).
When it loads it should detect the windows installation on c:\windows, so select it.. when you get to the prompt type 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot', then exit to reset your comuter, and it should be up fine.
 
I tried that ... twice :) ... still did not work. Not sure if I tried it with the IDE still connected as well .... should it work either way??
 
yeah it might be picking up the ide drive's windows installation..
try disconnect the ide drive and see if it picks up the sata installation.

or the problem could be that the SATA drive has no partition set as active?
any bootdisk with fdisk would fix that...
 
I am trying to get a bootdisk to try out fdisk .... the windows recover boot will not let me run fdisk ... and I don't have a floppy drive ... so have to create a CD/DVD boot disk :( ... taking its sweet time ...
will try disconnecting the ide drive ... hopefully it will be as easy as that :) .. thanx
 
I installed a new SATA drive in my machine over the weekend. (320Gb SATA + 2x 200GB ATA + 20Gb ATA + DVD-RW)
1. Win XP (without SP1) only supports upto 121Gb during installation.
2. In the bios you can set the order in which the harddrives must boot. (moved the SATA hdd 1st)(Gigabyte Motherboard)

Partitioned 320Gb, 100gb for WinXP installation. After install and installation of SP, partitioned rest of hdd.
 
I have set the SATA drive to boot first in the bios ... unfortunately this only tells the system where to look for the MBR .... windows then takes over and does its own thing :)
 
partition magic does not seem to be able to do it ... its what helped cause this mess in the first place :)
I am getting a ubdc4win boot cd .. will try that out with fdisk ... hopefully that should work :)
 
The problem might not be anything to do with the MBR issue. Remember SATA does not have an MBR like IDE does. Your mobo needs to view the SATA drive like an IDE device in order to see it as a boot device. By default most mobo's BIOS sets it into SATA RAID mode, which is not bootable. Pain in the rear. Make sure that the BIOS is set right for the SATA drive. Try completely removing the IDE drive from the boot order if at all possible and see if it tries to boot. Basically remove IDE drive, run fixMBR, and try reboot. If it still does not work, i.e no disk found, I would hazard a guess at it being the BIOS setting.
 
Best thing is to transfer all information on the IDE drive to the SATA, format the bloody IDE and disconnect the IDE, install XP on the SATA and your problem is solved, 1 2 skip a few 10 ;)
 
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I don't want to have to reinstall windows again ... that is such a slep ... and takes a long time to get everything working the way I want it to :)

Graviti : the bios settings are correct ... set to detect the SATA first and definitely not in RAID.
 
hi guys,
just thought I would thank you all for the help and let you know how I fixed the problem - just in case someone else comes across the same or similar prob.
Firstly, I had 2 active partitions which was the whole problem. So I used the Ultimate boot CD (UBCD 3.4) which has super fdisk. I used super fdisk to remove the active partition tag from the partition that I did not want to be active anymore :)
I then let windows repair(the one that does setup again, not the repair console) do the rest :)
My system now runs of the right partition/disk, with a few hickups with some programs ... but otherwise ... perfect :)
 
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