Windows XP Dual Hard Drive Probs

[kds]

Okay basically this is the situation:

I had windows 98SE installed on my 160gb hard drive got xp and decided to install that but as i only had a cd couldnt do a clean install and had to install from the cd to a different partition...

After installing xp i got a 2nd hard drive (40gb) and decided i wanted this to be my boot disk and also cos i had 98 before the size of my 1st hard drive was limited to 137gb so i also want to use the full capacity of my drive. so, i set up the drive using maxblast 3 (maxtor program for maxtor drives) and installed xp, now i have a system that on load shows 2 instances of xp (1 on each hard drive) and one of windows 98. Now thinking that im all ready to go i swap hard drives so the 40gb is now the master and load up my comp but during load it says "error loading OS" or something similar

So now im in a dilemma as i cant get the full capacity of my drive without formatting the drive but i dont want to do it and then xp wont load... any ideas?

[phext]

You should just format and reinstall, I dunno what you mean about not being able to do a clean install cause you have a cd. I have always been able to do a clean install whether it was an upgrade version or not. I wouldn't mess with fat32 (98se) on those hard drives. On larger drives fat32 is not as efficient.

[kds]

when i 1st got xp the only way i could get into my comp was safe mode (which has no cd support) the install disk i have has no floppy disk so i have no way of runnin it from load and obviously setup cant run in dos, so had to go thru the long process of copying everything off the cd to the hard drive using dos loading up into safe mode then startign the installation that way everything was fine but im missing about 23gb of HD space and need to reformat the drive to access it...

if i was to reformat my 160 gb hard drive and switch it to slave and 40gb as my master theres a very strong chance that it wont load as when i have tried to use my 40gb hard drive on its own i get a "cannot load OS" message and the same if they are used in a different order to what they are now...

i dont wanna lose evertything i have on my comp so dont wanna mess up, jus need a way of making the 40gb hard drive load up the windows os installed on it... as i have no idea on how xp works in relation to these things not sure what can be done to fix it.. tried looking for the boot.ini file so could see if the prob was there or if the 40gb drive didnt have a boot.ini file on it, but wasnt found when i ran a search in windows

[kds]

k tried a couple of things and on another forum was told this:

You'll have to create a boot floppy disk and then edit the "boot.ini" file, that's on the new master (40GB).
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000492.htm

Search "boot.ini" in Google.

i followed the instructions and only managed to find the boot.ini file on the c:\ (where i first had installed win 98se) but not on my 40gb hard drive so this is prob y its not working but any help on fixin the prob??

[crossedup]

Are you looking while running XP? sounds like it. Make sure you have the "hide system files" box unchecked under folder options. Just a thought.

[sechs]

The problem is that you switched the disks after installing the OS.

Switch the disks and then *boot* to the Windows XP CD to install.

[roley]

You can download fresh working floppy images for Win98SE etc from the internet. From these it is always possible to reformat your drive and muck around with DOS tools...if that is what you need.

2ndly, WinXP is a bootable CD and so long as your drive is formatted (FAT32 or NTFS doesnt matter) you should be able to reformat from that CD...

I would not do it this way. It is possible to boot from the Win98SE disk and format the drive at the DOS prompt in seconds from the RAMDRIVE (might be f drive):

f:\format c: /v:system /q

This means format the c drive using FAT32, call it system and do it quickly.

Then take this diskette out, insert the CD, reboot the system and press any key when it prompts you to. This will initiate the XP installation.

You may need to use fdisk on the floppy to reset the partition on the 160GB drive, as it would be set to active/bootable...you just want it to be inactive/non-bootable.

Also, NTFS is supposedly better than FAT32...probably is, but it isnt going to make that much difference to you anway.

Also, should back up all your data before you do things like this...so I assume you have.

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Look at this article from microsoft about enabling 48-bit addressing in WinXP...if it doesnt do it automatically. http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;303013

Roley
Black Frog Technologies

[AthlonXP2600]

this sounds like my western digital 160gb transitioning over from ata33 to 133, it was limmeted to 137gb because of a piece of **** motherboard, but i got my new system and sadly had to go back to the origional data lifeguard cd. boot from that then format it for winxp w/sp1 and it will show 160gb. In the windows formatting when installing xp on the boot drive, don't use the 160 as a boot drive! hope this helps

(i assume this is a WDC hdd, if not, just ignore me!)

[kds]

not being rude or nothin but most of u are wrong cos u didnt 'listen' to my problem in the slightest...

but anyway i found a solution myself with the help i received and this is what i found:

the boot.ini file is located on the c:\ (which is where i had installed 98 first) so when i've swapped the hard drives round theres no boot file which is why i have been havin this problem to fix it i edited the boot.ini file to match the default settings (well thats what i would have done if i knew so i asked someone to send me a copy of theirs instead), nex copied the new boot.ini file to my 40gb hard drive, jus have to wait till i get home to test it cos im at work and didnt have time yes2day

jus fort id put the solution up incase anyone in future has a similar problem

[roley]

Well anyway, let us know if you were successful in editing the boot.ini file. The proof is in the booting so to speak.

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But the uncertainty for me comes in when the issue comes to mucking around with boot.ini. I have done it from within Windows, but I generally try and avoid doing too much with system files...because I dont like it when things go wrong.

If you are successful in what you're doing then I might try and have an experiment with it myself...

I usually try to structure what I am doing around clean installations and data partitions where I can efficiently tuck files I need whilst I am changing file systems, repartitioning etc on the system partitions/drives.

It'll be interesting

Roley
Black Frog Tech