hi, my desktop pc is broken and i am having probs trying to fix it!

i reinstalled windows using my bigger 20Gb drive as an system drive forgetting it was on a slave setting.

However it all worked fine til i decided to get rid of my 6Gb master drive, now it won't boot!

i have run windows repair console and all the files are there it just appears that there is no boot record or anything to say that this is a boot drive.

can anyone help? don't want to have to reinstall windows tho i guess i will have too if i can't install it!

this is becasue windows installs the boot loader files on the master drive even if the installation it self is on another drive

just trying to remeber how i fixed mine. think i may have just done a clean install with the one disk in.

You probably left the old master as your windows directory. The easiest way is to reinstall without this drive, but change your new drive to master and your old one to slave (it should take about half an hour to install XP). You are then free to transfer any files from the old drive and then remove it.


[Edited on 17-5-06 by RazMan]

Does your bios recognise the drive? Just reinstall windows over itself so you repair it and it will not lose anything.

oh yeah i forgot that windows does that, i always format my drives when reinstalling windows. will do that then, am waiting for a better copy of windows, the one i have been using is abit suspect!

cheers guys

you will not be able to run a repair as the installation looks for various files when running. These are the files that are on the old master drive. If you put the master drive back in the system will boot, provided you haven't chnaged anything else. This is what is happening behind the 'nightrider' start up screen. Windows starts on the master and then the system has a file that tells it how many operating systems there are installed and what drives thy are on. if you only have one OS installed in will go through to windows. on multi boot systems the options page will come up. you have ended up needing two drives to start windows. my best advice is to put the other back in, start up. then back up all youir files. then do a fresh install with only the 20gb HDD in.

Richard

From the title of the post, I was expecting to see a competition involving lady bits! Silly me

i would just do

something a bit different

put back the master in
and jumper again the other as slave.

Copy the root files to the other one (leave them anyway also on the other)

Like boot.ini (the file mentioned above)
copy also other little crap.

then just run another tool like partition magic or something with that you should be able to prepare the slave disk for booting (boot secotr copy)

then you are almost done!

exept you will need to alter boot.ini!!
because you need to change disk(1) to disk (0) for all the options/versions you see like safe mode etc..
untherstand???

anyway its far easyer just to do a reinstall and take some pints watching it from the sofa!

just backup everything before cleaning

Tks

Boo. I read this message subject and thought I was going to be judging a female anatomy contest!

Yes where are the norks