PC won't boot without useless 10GB, and I have to take it out

[ArcticFox]

Nevermind figured it out, though still not what I wanted.


I'm currently packing three hard drives in my PC, along with a DVD-ROM. It's a 10GB, 40GB, and my primary 80GB. My problem is that I don't want or need that 10GB, yet if I remove it the system won't boot. I have an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe, and if I take it out, the BIOS acts like my 80GB isn't even their (although it recognizes it), and tries to boot from the CD, and then the LAN.

The 40 and 10GBs are not mine, and the 10 is only creating heat and holding a backup of my freind's stuff (another reason why I don't want it spinning unnecessarily).

The things on that drive are:
Backup (Folder)
nVidia (Folder)
nVidia Display Driver (Folder)
Recycler (Folder)
System Volume Information (Folder)
AutoExec.BAT
boot.ini
Config.sys
IO.sys
MSDOS.SYS
NTDETECT.com
ntldr

Is there any way to yank this drive and still use my system? My other, unfixable as far as I know, is my boot drive is set as D: and I'd like it to be C:. But I can't change that now, oh well.

[rpertusio]

What did you figure out? What exactly do you still need help with?

The 10gb is considered the boot drive with an active partition, so your BIOS wants to boot to it. It contains all the boot files (boot.ini, config.sys, ntldr, ntdetect.com, etc) that are essential for booting XP.

You could use 'diskpart' from within XP's commandline to set the active partition to your 80gb. Or, if you are more comfortable, use FDISK (use the updated Fdisk found on this page ) to set the right partition 'active'. Your BIOS should then consider your 80gb 'bootable' and attempt to boot. It will need all the boot files that are on your 10gb drive.

As far as the 'D:' drive, it is near impossible to change the drive if that is how it was installed by Windows. It IS possible to change the drive to "C:", but remember that all your programs/registry are pointing to "D:" and your computer may not boot correctly if it doesn't find the "D:" drive. With that warning, you should probably NOT procede. However, here are instructions if you would like to risk it.

- rp

[ArcticFox]

Alright, so I was able to transfer the critical files to the 40GB, take the 10GB out, and boot with the 80GB. Still requires that 40GB, so I'm thinking of re-reformating sooner rather than later.

Anyways, yeah I don't feel like it's that much of a deal, I'll just start over yet again.