windows cant be detected without a second drive present?

[kev380]

i did a fresh installation of windows xp pro. when i was installing, i have a second drive attached to the mobo which has winxp in it. when i finish the installation on the first drive, both windows can be boot normally. but once i take out the second drive. my new windows installation cannot be detected. i think the boot info is stored on the second drive.but how can i fix this without using a boot manager. thanks!

[shiyan]

hmm... I think you are stuck with Windows thinking that the drive it's on is D: rather than C:.

to fix the boot issue, you might have to copy the boot files over from C: to D:, ntldr, boot.ini ...

then you'll have to fix the master boot record of the new drive, by running repair with the CD, and then typing fixmbr.

I think you'll be better off just doing a new fresh install.

[kev380]

is there anything else i can do. thanks.

[diehrd]

I have seen this many times.I decided that durring the install XP detects and somehow eather makes a file refering to that drive durring boot that prevents a start with out the second drive or XP puts a file on the second drive that is needed durring the boot. I have seen this at least 20 times my self and have avoided the issue by installing XP on a drive with no other hard drives in the system durring the instlation. If someone has the correct reason this problem happens I would love to here it LOL.............