boot-up failure with two drives on IDE bus

[philsaun]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a second
data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of space. No
problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone on the
bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: “autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK” - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

 

[Mike T.]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a second
data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of space. No
problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone on the
bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: “autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK” - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

You can't have two primary, active partitions. CS should work OK, but
doesn't always. You should try setting one drive as master and the other as
slave.

But there is a much easier way. Get yourself Acronis True Image. Whichever
physical drive boots correctly alone, IMAGE that drive to a freshly
formatted logical drive on the other physical drive. Then create rescue
boot CD (linux clone of the True Image program, and bootable). This is easy
to do from within the True Image program.

If you want the image you create to be updated frequently, you can add
"scheduled tasks" to the True Image program. So, for example, it will
automatically re-image your boot drive to your non-boot drive every month,
or week, or whatever you specify.

How you use the space on the second physical drive is up to you, but I'd
probably use 25% for True Image (images/backups), 25% UNPARTITIONED SPACE,
and the rest can be extra data storage space.

How this helps? If your primary boot drive dies, boot your Acronis rescue
CD. From there, you can restore the most recent image/backup to a new
primary boot drive, or (maybe as a temporary fix?) restore the image to the
unpartitioned space on the second hard drive.

Of course, what you are really trying to accomplish is called RAID 1. So
you could get a replacement mainboard (if it's cheap) or an add-on IDE
controller card with RAID function. If you want more storage space (after
the 2 current drives are mirrored, essentially using all their space), IDE
drives are cheap. You should be able to put at least three of them on your
current mainboard, and still have room for an IDE optical drive. -Dave

 

[Peter]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a second
data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of space. No
problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone on the
bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: ?autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK? - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

You can't have two primary, active partitions. CS should work OK, but
doesn't always. You should try setting one drive as master and the other as
slave.

You sure about not being able to have 2 primary, active partitions? I
have 2 different O/S's on separate HDs, both on the same IDE and both
primary and active, so that I can boot to either O/S whenever I choose
by using the BIOS boot manager on my motherboard. I don't have them set
for CS though. One is master and the other is slave.

 

[Mike T.]

You sure about not being able to have 2 primary, active partitions? I

have 2 different O/S's on separate HDs, both on the same IDE and both
primary and active, so that I can boot to either O/S whenever I choose
by using the BIOS boot manager on my motherboard. I don't have them set
for CS though. One is master and the other is slave.

If 2 primary, active partitions was OK, then you wouldn't need a BIOS boot
manager. After the CPU runs POST, and assuming everything checks out OK,
the CPU will look for an OS to boot. ONE of the places that the CPU will
search (if the CMOS settings reflect this) is the primary, active partition
of your hard disk drives. If there is more than one, that is a problem.
Solution? One of many is a BIOS boot manager. Essentially, this reprograms
CMOS settings every time that the computer is booted, so that one of your
hard drives is ignored when the CPU is looking for an OS to boot. -Dave

 

[JAD]

remove the second drive from the boot list

 

[Rod Speed]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a
second data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of
space. No problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone
on the bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: “autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK” - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

You can't have two primary, active partitions.

Wrong, it works fine when the drive is cloned properly.

CS should work OK, but doesn't always.

Wrong again.

You should try setting one drive as master and the other as slave.

But there is a much easier way. Get yourself Acronis True Image. Whichever physical drive boots
correctly alone, IMAGE that drive to a freshly formatted logical drive on the other physical
drive. Then
create rescue boot CD (linux clone of the True Image program, and
bootable). This is easy to do from within the True Image program.

He can do what he wants to do. The only trick is to boot
the Hitachi with the Maxtor physically disconnected for the
first boot of the Hitachi after the clone has been done with TI.
XP will claim to have found new hardware and ask to be allowed
to reboot. Allow that and once its booted full after that, the
Maxtor can be connected again and ignored until the Maxtor fails.

And TI will expand the install to fill the Hitachi by default too.

There are however some advantages in using an image instead of a
clone, particularly being able to do quick incremental images over time.

There are advantages with cloning tho, particularly the very
quick coming up on the clone if the main boot drive fails.

Very few actually need that very quick restore tho.

If you want the image you create to be updated frequently, you can add "scheduled tasks" to the
True Image program. So, for example, it will automatically re-image your boot drive to your
non-boot drive every month, or week, or whatever you specify.

You can reclone at whatever rate you like too.

How you use the space on the second physical drive is up to you, but I'd probably use 25% for True
Image (images/backups), 25%
UNPARTITIONED SPACE, and the rest can be extra data storage space.

What is the point of unpartitioned space ?

How this helps? If your primary boot drive dies, boot your Acronis
rescue CD. From there, you can restore the most recent image/backup
to a new primary boot drive, or (maybe as a temporary fix?) restore
the image to the unpartitioned space on the second hard drive.

Its unlikely to fit.

Of course, what you are really trying to accomplish is called RAID 1.

Nope, RAID1 has the massive downside that any user stupidity
or virus infection etc affects the original and the copy.

 

[Rod Speed]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor
boot drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created
a second data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of
space. No problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is
alone on the bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the
Hitachi and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to
the Hitachi to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an
internal back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I
have been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon
my C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1)
is bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot
sequence is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: ?autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK? - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been
shut down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

You can't have two primary, active partitions. CS should work OK,
but doesn't always. You should try setting one drive as master and
the other as slave.

You sure about not being able to have 2 primary, active partitions?

He's just plain wrong, as usual.

I have 2 different O/S's on separate HDs, both on the same IDE and
both primary and active, so that I can boot to either O/S whenever
I choose by using the BIOS boot manager on my motherboard.

Yep, works fine.

I don't have them set for CS though. One is master and the other is slave.

It works fine with CS and MS.

 

[Rod Speed]

If 2 primary, active partitions was OK, then you wouldn't need a BIOS boot manager.

Wrong. You're massively confusing two active primary partitions ON THE ONE
DRIVE, with two active primary partitions on TWO DIFFERENT DRIVES.

After the CPU runs POST, and assuming everything
checks out OK, the CPU will look for an OS to boot.

It actually checks what the user has specified in the boot order list on modern systems.

ONE of the places that the CPU will search (if the CMOS settings reflect this) is the primary,
active partition of your hard disk drives.

That only happens AFTER its attempting to boot a drive in the boot order list in the bios.

If there is more than one, that is a problem.

Nope, not when they are on separate drives, the
boot order list specifys which one will be booted.

Solution? One of many is a BIOS boot manager.

It isnt a boot manager, its JUST a boot order list.

A boot manager offers the user a list of what is bootable
for the user to select which he wants booted, at boot time,
and usually defaults to one of them if the user does nothing.

Essentially, this reprograms CMOS settings every time
that the computer is booted, so that one of your hard drives is ignored when the CPU is looking
for an OS to boot.

Wrong again. It JUST uses the boot order list and moves
thru that until it finds a bootable drive. And THEN attempts
to boot the active primary partition on that drive.

 

[Rod Speed]

remove the second drive from the boot list

Wont help. The problem is that XP has got royally confused
when the Hitachi was booted with the Maxtor visible to XP
on the first boot of the Hitachi after the clone was done.

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a
second data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of
space. No problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone
on the bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: “autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK” - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

 

[Chris Hill]

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a second
data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of space. No
problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone on the
bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

I don't think windows is going to allow you to do that. If you want
raid get a raid controller and set up a mirror.

 

[DaveW]

You can NOT do what you are attempting. Having two bootable OS's on the
system without doing two completely separate installs of the two OS's and
thus having a Boot Selection screen appear at startup is NOT possible under
any version of Windows.

It sounds like what you are trying to do would be very doable by setting up
RAID 1 array (two mirrored harddrives, with the same info on each, using a
RAID chipset either on your motherboard or an add-on PCI card.) That should
be your goal.

 

[Rod Speed]

I don't think windows is going to allow you to do that.

Yes it does, you just have to do it the right way.

If you want raid get a raid controller and set up a mirror.

That has significant downsides over what he wants to do,
particularly not protecting against user stupiditys, the system
getting screwed by an update etc, and a virus infection etc.

 

[Rod Speed]

You can NOT do what you are attempting.

Yes you can.

Having two bootable OS's on the system without doing two completely separate installs of the two
OS's and thus having a Boot Selection screen appear at startup

He doesnt want that last.

is NOT possible under any version of Windows.

You're just plain wrong on that last, either your way
or his on how you select which you want to boot.

It sounds like what you are trying to do would be very doable by
setting up RAID 1 array (two mirrored harddrives, with the same info on each, using a RAID chipset
either on your motherboard or an add-on PCI card.) That should be your goal.

Thats nothing like what he wants to do, because it
doesnt protect against user stupidity, the OS getting
stuffed by an update, or a virus infection either.

I need help please! - I am a new member - January 30, 2007

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB Maxtor boot
drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive and then created a
second data partition on the Hitachi with the left over 44GB of
space. No problems and the Hitachi boots up just fine if it is alone
on the bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary IDE bus
and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as I always have with
the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive. If my primary Maxtor
ever dies I will simply disconnect it and then boot up on the Hitachi
and go from there. I wish to be able to read and write to the Hitachi
to keep it current with the primary Maxtor - simply an internal
back-up drive that is bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems I have
been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

[b:56a38ae01a]My Setup[/b:56a38ae01a]: two IDE ATA/133 drives
[u:56a38ae01a]Master drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS) on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon my
C: drive with XP Pro
[u:56a38ae01a]Second drive[/u:56a38ae01a]: jumpered as CS - Hitachi
250GB, 2 partitions on secondary (gray) IDE connector partition(1) is
bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor - partition(2) is 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the boot sequence
is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then: “autochk program not found -- skipping
AUTOCHK” - double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen - then dreaded blue screen
of death with this error:
STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a
status of 0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000) The system has been shut
down.

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

 

[Peter]

If 2 primary, active partitions was OK, then you wouldn't need a BIOS boot
manager. After the CPU runs POST, and assuming everything checks out OK,
the CPU will look for an OS to boot. ONE of the places that the CPU will
search (if the CMOS settings reflect this) is the primary, active partition
of your hard disk drives. If there is more than one, that is a problem.
Solution? One of many is a BIOS boot manager. Essentially, this reprograms
CMOS settings every time that the computer is booted, so that one of your
hard drives is ignored when the CPU is looking for an OS to boot. -Dave

As Rod stated, I think I may have not been clear when I said BIOS boot
manager. Normally if I don't press any key the system will boot from
the master HD automatically. However, if I press F8 I am offered a menu
of devices that I can select from to boot. I can then choose the slave
drive to boot from instead and my other O/S would start.

It doesn't need a boot manager to avoid problems. It just improves the
choices that I can use as to how I would like to have my system
configured. Without that BIOS option I would have been stuck with
needing some boot disk management software and having both O/S's on the
same HD probably which would have been too inconvenient.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I have recently created a good bootable clone of my 200GB
Maxtor boot drive using TransXP on a Hitachi 250GB drive
and then created a second data partition on the Hitachi with
the left over 44GB of space. No problems and the Hitachi
boots up just fine if it is alone on the bus.

What do I want to accomplish?
I simply want to be able to have both drives on the primary
IDE bus and be able to boot up normally on the Maxtor as
I always have with the Hitachi recognized as a simple data drive.
If my primary Maxtor ever dies I will simply disconnect it and
then boot up on the Hitachi and go from there. I wish to be
able to read and write to the Hitachi to keep it current with
the primary Maxtor - simply an internal back-up drive that is
bootable if needed.

Below are all the details of my configuration and the problems
I have been having. What am I doing wrong?

Single boot problem with two bootable drives on the
primary IDE bus.

My Setup: two IDE ATA/133 drives
Master drive: Maxtor 200GB, 1 partition
jumpered as Cable Select (CS)
on black (primary) end of IDE ribbon
[on] my C: drive with XP Pro
Second drive: Hitachi 250GB, 2 partitions
jumpered as CS
on secondary (gray) IDE connector
partition(1): bootable 200GB clone of Maxtor
partition(2): 44GB data space

Both drives are recognized as above in the BIOS and the
boot sequence is:
1. A: Floppy, 2. Maxtor Primary Master, 3. BenqCD.

When booting up with both drives on primary IDE bus:
XP starts to load - then:

"autochk program not found -- skipping AUTOCHK" -
double-blue tone screen
long --> long wait --> black screen
then dreaded blue screen of death with this error:

"STOP: c000021a {fatal system error} The
Windows Logon Process system process terminated
unexpectedly with a status of
0xc000012f (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down."

No relevant help on the c000021a error code at Microsoft support.

What gives here? Thanks so much for any advice. Phil

What you want to do is called "dual booting" - the selection
at boot time of one OS or the other OS to load. In your case,
one of the OSes is a clone of an earlier version of the other OS,
and they are on separate HDs, with both HDs on the same
IDE channel.

There are several ways to dual-boot. If the OSes are on
separate HDs, you can select which HD's MBR is given control
by telling the BIOS which HD is to be put at the head of the
BIOS's hard drive boot order. You have been doing this by
specifying which HD is in the BIOS's device boot order. Other
BIOSes let you separately specify the entire hard drive boot
order in an ordered list (that you can modify via keyboard input).
The MBR of the chosen HD then passes control to the boot
sector of the Primary partition that is marked "active" on that
HD. The boot sector on that partition then passes control to
ntldr (which it expects to find on that partition), and ntldr then
consults the boot.ini file on the same partition. In your case,
the original OS was single-booted, and thus the clone is also
single-booted, so there is only one option in the boot.ini file,
and ntldr simply continues on with booting the OS. Note
that the partition with ntldr and boot.ini must be a Primary
partition and that it must be marked "active". Check this out
with Disk Management (rt-clk My Computer, clk Manage,
clk Disk Management). The partition containing ntldr and
boot.ini needn't be the same as the partition containing the
OS, but in your case they are.

You can also dual-boot by adding an entry in the boot.ini
file which contains the location of the 2nd OS. In such a
scenario, you can just leave one or the other HD at the head
of the hard drive boot order, and select the OS from a menu
that ntldr presents on the screen that is a reflection of the
entries in boot.ini. In your failure mode scenario, though, the
original HD may have crashed, so you'd not be able to dual-
boot using the boot files in the original HD. In that case, with
the original HD unreadable, the BIOS would automatically
revert to the 2nd HD in the hard drive boot order - which
would be your Hitachi. If it doesn't, just disconnect the Maxtor,
and the Hitachi would automatically move to the head of the
BIOS's hard drive boot order.

Why you're getting your error may be due to:
1) the boot files are not in a Primary partition that is marked
"active". The boot files should be just below the root,
and named "boot.ini", "ntldr", and "ntdetect.com".
(Your OS is probably also in that same partition.)
2) the MBR was not copied over from the original HD.
3) as Rod Speed has stated, the clone should not be allowed
to see the original OS when the clone is started up for the
first time. (The original OS can be started with the clone
visible to it, but the CLONE must be started in isolation
from its "parent" OS when started for the 1st time.) The
easiest way to do that is to simply disconnect the original
OS's hard drive when starting the clone for the 1st time.
The 2nd HD in the hard drive boot order then automatically
gets boot control, and the clone should boot up when the
system is started.

*TimDaniels*