Making a former Slave HD bootable

  • Thread starter Thread starter aa
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aa

I have two harddrives on my PC, teh Primary has XP and the Slave has w2k

The Primary HD crushed, I took it out and moved the Slave in its place,
while seting the jamper on the Slave into "Master or single drive" position.

Now how do I make this HD bootable?
 
I forgot to mention that when I boot from Partition Magic rescue diskette or
from Boot Magic Rescue diskette, this disk is shown as Active Primary
bootable yet it would not boot saying that its configuration is wrong
 
What exactly do you expect to repair? Which particular simple repair
operation would you suggest?
This HD has not been damaged and I still can read drom it.
But I guess to be bootable it needs something like Master boot record which
I guess, never been there as it was a slave drive.

Which repair operation will create or restore a Master boot record?
 
Thanks.
What about NTLDR, boot.ini etc ?
As I never booted from this HD as it was slave, then these files are removed
together with the faulty master disk. If so I need to somehow restore them?
 
fdisk /mbr did not help. Id does no send any messages - just pause for a
second and returns the prompt - is it supposed to be like this?
BTW an attempt to boot says that w2k could not start because of a computer
hardware config problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check
boot path and disk hardware. So it somehow knows that I want to load w2k
which should mean that the boot sector is OK?
 
Try doing a simple repair operation. If that doesn't work, do a full
repair install.
 
fixboot fixmbr did not help either.
My installation appeared to be on letter H drive and fixboot said that it
will write boot sectors on C - I confirmed
fixmbr warned that my existing MBR is unusual and it will rewrite it which
might result in some partitions will become invisible - I confirmed
Re-booted - same message about HD config problem.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
I was under the impression that your second disk had a fully
operating version of Win2000, which used to run off drive C:.
If this is not the case then your best bet is a complete
reload of Windows 2000, followed by a reload of all
applications. Remember to back up your important data
files first.
Click to expand...

I do not remember exactly. It might be both ways.
By reload you mean format and unstall anew?
So if it was not a fully o perating version of Win2000, which used to run
off drive C, then you suggest scap it and reinstall
If it is a fully operating version of Win2000, which used to run off drive
C - when what can be done?
 
Just to exclude some stupid errors. To make sure that the HD is correctly
connected. I have two sockets on the motherboard, next to one another for
those flat ribbon cables. One socket is blue, the other one is black.
How shall I tell which one is for the master HD?
Also each ribbon has one connector at the end and another connector in the
middle - does it matter whether the master HD is connected to the center of
the ribbon or to its end?
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
If you don't remember which drive letter you had for
Windows 2000 and if you used the inbuilt Windows
boot loader then you can bet that your drive letter was
NOT the letter C:. You now have two options:
- Ask an expert in such matters to physically assist you.
This is too complex to be resolved in a newsgroup.
- Scrap the lot and start afresh.
Click to expand...
Just as a last hope before I scrap it - suppose it IS letter C. What would
be the options?
 
aa said:
What exactly do you expect to repair? Which particular simple repair
operation would you suggest?
This HD has not been damaged and I still can read drom it.
But I guess to be bootable it needs something like Master boot record which
I guess, never been there as it was a slave drive.

Which repair operation will create or restore a Master boot record?
Click to expand...

I don't have enough information to know what is missing.

A simple repair operation will check to make sure that all of the system
files are intact and will check various things like boot parameters. This
operation is one of the first things that the Win2K setup program offers. I'm
not sure where (if at all) it appears in the XP setup.

A full repair install will fix almost anything including the master boot
record. This operation is offered near the end of setup, when it detects a
previous installation.

If all you need to fix is the master boot record and/or the boot
configuration files, run the setup CD and launch the repair console. In the
repair console, execute FIXMBR and FIXBOOT.
 
aa said:
I have two harddrives on my PC, teh Primary has XP and the Slave has w2k

The Primary HD crushed, I took it out and moved the Slave in its place,
while seting the jamper on the Slave into "Master or single drive"
position.

Now how do I make this HD bootable?
Click to expand...

It depends.

If the partition on the slave disk is a logical drive inside
an extended partition then you have to use a third-party
product such as Acronis to convert the logical drive into
a primary partition.

If it is already a primary partition then you can do this:
- Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk (www.bootdisk.com)
- Execute this command:
fdisk /mbr

The command will restore your MBR. If someone
tells you that this won't work for NTFS partitions,
ignore them. The MBR is not part of the file system.

Another method requires you to boot the machine
with your Win2000 boot CD, go into the Recovery
Console and execute these commands
fixboot
fixmbr

Your machine may or may not boot after this. If it
does not, post again.
 
What kind of a repair install operation will fix the drive letter in all the
paths stored in the registry? Originally this drive had a different drive
letter, didn't it?

-Paul Randall
 
That is probably true, but before seeking remedies I would like to see what
exactly the problem is.
Is it faulty boot sector or MBR or letter mapping or else?
BTW fixmbr seem not to change the MBR becase dispite a message that it
successfully changed the MBR, when I run it again it again says that the
existong MBR is a nonstandard one
 
thanks, will try tomorrow
Pegasus (MVP) said:
aa said:
Just as a last hope before I scrap it - suppose it IS letter C. What would
be the options?
Click to expand...

Rather than mucking around with boot sectors etc, boot
the machine with a WinXP boot diskette and see what
you get.
- Format a floppy disk on some other WinXP/2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these files from the \i386 folder of your WinXP CD to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
- Create a file a:\boot.ini with these lines
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="1 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="2 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="3 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Note that the last three lines each start with the word "multi".
If your newsreader wraps them around then you must
unwrap them.

Now boot your machine with this floppy disk and try
each of the three boot options. Remember to instruct
your BIOS to boot off the floppy disk drive!
Click to expand...
 
aa said:
fdisk /mbr did not help. Id does no send any messages - just pause for a
second and returns the prompt - is it supposed to be like this?
BTW an attempt to boot says that w2k could not start because of a computer
hardware config problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check
boot path and disk hardware. So it somehow knows that I want to load w2k
which should mean that the boot sector is OK?
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that your second disk had a fully
operating version of Win2000, which used to run off drive C:.
If this is not the case then your best bet is a complete
reload of Windows 2000, followed by a reload of all
applications. Remember to back up your important data
files first.
 
aa said:
I do not remember exactly. It might be both ways.
By reload you mean format and unstall anew?
So if it was not a fully o perating version of Win2000, which used to run
off drive C, then you suggest scap it and reinstall
If it is a fully operating version of Win2000, which used to run off drive
C - when what can be done?
Click to expand...

If you don't remember which drive letter you had for
Windows 2000 and if you used the inbuilt Windows
boot loader then you can bet that your drive letter was
NOT the letter C:. You now have two options:
- Ask an expert in such matters to physically assist you.
This is too complex to be resolved in a newsgroup.
- Scrap the lot and start afresh.
 
A repair install will fix the system paths, but it won't fix all of the
paths associated with installed programs. Some third-party utilities will fix
a lot of these problems, but probably not all of them (and will probably break
some things in the process).
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
Rather than mucking around with boot sectors etc, boot
the machine with a WinXP boot diskette and see what
you get.
- Format a floppy disk on some other WinXP/2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
Click to expand...

Does XP/w2k automatically format a diskette as a bootable one? I recall that
to make a diskette bootable a special command has to be used but do not
remember which particular one
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
I was under the impression that your second disk had a fully
operating version of Win2000, which used to run off drive C:.
If this is not the case then your best bet is a complete
reload of Windows 2000, followed by a reload of all
applications. Remember to back up your important data
files first.
Click to expand...

I think you're right. It sounds like this system is too much of a mess
for him to clean up himself, even with all of the help we can give. Even for
an expert, it could be more effort to fix then to rebuild from scratch.
 
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