PDA

View Full Version : Help! my pc wont load with 1 hd


badboy28
08-20-02, 05:04 AM
hello
Well I have a dilemma. I just finished making my new system. Asus ktv333 with an athlon xp 2000 and a new antec case(or one from an asain company who copied it).
Ok heres the problem. I also have the western digital hd 120 gb 8mb cache 7200 rpm one. And i had it in my old system and it worked flawlessly with another 20 gig which was the master. Well when it was in my old system, a couple days before i made my new system, i decided to install windows xp on it so i can dual boot with win98. I did that and it worked flawlessly too.
Then when i made my new system i put it in, and it just gives me problems. Itll go past the "asus" logo screen and then before showing the windows xp loading screen, theres another screen(which is normal, its just saying things like "finding devices, etc") that is black, kinda like a dos thing. Its perfectly normal, but after saying the normal messages such as "finding ide devices, etc.," itll stop and say some message and stay there. Basically, If I try to have my 120 gb alone and set it as some weird jumper setting that wd said to in the manuel if there are no other devices on the ide cable(and there arent), itll say something like "ntfds not found . please restart with bootdiscs" or something to that effect(cant remember exactly). If i set the jumper to master it wont even give any msg. It will just stay there. So with these settings, it wont load windows xp.
Now heres the weird thing, i got my friends 13gig hd and hooked it up with my 120gb harddrive, i set the 120 to slave, and boom, it works. Windows and all my files are installed on my 120hd and theres nothing on the 13gig. For some reason, i cant run my 120gb hd without that 13 gig, even though theres nothing on the 13 gig. My 120gb hd on my old system was the "d:\" drive. we did reinstall windows xp many times on the 120gb without formatting cause i have many important files on there.
My friend said its not working because since i installed windows xp on my 120 "d:\" drive on my old system, and i try to put the harddrive in the new system, it wont work cause the default setting for installing or booting up windows is the "c:/." But the weird thing is when i have the two hd hooked together in the new system, the 120gb is labeled as "c:\"and has the windows folder on it, and the other 13gig hd labeled as "e:\" with nothing on it(the reason the 13gb is not labeled as d:\ is because i have a 1210A plextor which is the d:\ and a zip drive labeled as f:\ and the floppy as A:\).
i tried taking the 13gig out and messing around by again making the setting for teh 120 master, but it just wont work without the 13 gig hd. Is there any way without formatting my 120gb harddrive completely i can run it alone without the 13 gig harddrive?I am trying desperately not to reformat due to the fact i have amny important files that would take a long time to back up.
Thanks for your help.(sorry if its a little confusing)

diehrd
08-21-02, 10:44 AM
Ok here is what you need to do.Format the 120 in the old machine and be sure to eliminate the master boot record..Format /mbr ..

The problem is xp will put something on the second drive and durring boot up if this is not present you get that error.

To prove this install the 120 and the 20 on the new system and bang it will now boot to windows......{AS I see you have done}

I had this happen on my dual box with 2 hard drives,What I did so I am able to boot with only 1 installed was set up the main drive clean on its own then,did the same thing with the second drive.{In my case I have 2 exact drives with exact O/S and programs so I ghosted the first image to the second drive}