HELP! How do I move the boot partition?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Danaher
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Paul Danaher

I have a dying hard drive with XPPro. I have a new hard drive with XPPro. If
I remove the old drive, I get the message "non-system disk" etc. At some
point, I won't be able to use the old drive any more. So - how do I get a
boot partition onto the new drive?
 
Hi,

Remove the old drive, boot the WinXP CD and load the Recovery Console, run
fixboot from the command prompt.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
There's a slight problem here, which is that I can't boot the WinXP CD - my
internal CD-ROM isn't working, so I need to be booted already in order to
access the external USB drives ...
 
Hi Paul,

Time to purchase or swap in a new internal drive unless your BIOS supports
booting from the USB one (some do).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Rick said:
Hi Paul,

Time to purchase or swap in a new internal drive unless your BIOS
supports booting from the USB one (some do).
Click to expand...

I've tried replacing the drive, checked the power supply, replacing the
ribbon connector (the floppy drive's disappeared completely) - which leaves
something weird happening (on the motherboard?). I'm assuming I'm witnessing
graceful degradation, so I expect the machine to die altogether in the
not-too-distant future - but I always wait for the last possible moment to
buy a new computer (and yes, I'm backing up regularly).

Can I switch the HD to another machine with an internal CD drive that works,
fix it that way?
 
Hi Paul,
Can I switch the HD to another machine with an internal CD drive that works,
fix it that way?
Click to expand...

Yep, you can.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Uh, no I can't. I have the XPPro upgrade, it apparently isn't bootable ...
Darn, I thought we were getting somewhere ...
 
Hi Paul,

The upgrade disk is certainly bootable. Perhaps the BIOS boot order is set
incorrectly?

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Rick said:
Hi Paul,

The upgrade disk is certainly bootable. Perhaps the BIOS boot order
is set incorrectly?
Click to expand...
Then I don't understand - I'll go through the whole rigmarole again and
check, but I definitely went into the bios and set the primary boot order to
CD-ROM as first option. I replaced the primary HDD with the alien HDD, set
to "cable select" (the current setting on the native primary HDD).
If I put the new HDD on this machine (the one I want to make bootable) in as
the secondary HDD on the machine with the functional CD drive and pull the
power on the primary HDD with the bios set to boot from the CD, am I running
into any obvious snafu?
 
Hi,

If it sees the other drive, then you could have a problem. Suggest you
completely detach the original drive and set the new one as the only one in
the system for this.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Rick said:
Hi,

If it sees the other drive, then you could have a problem. Suggest you
completely detach the original drive and set the new one as the only
one in the system for this.
Click to expand...
Weird - that was what I did last time. Oh well, follow the Microsoft motto -
"uninstall, install!"
 
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