Windows doesn't boot after adding another hard drive

[tester3000]

First of all,, sorry for creating so many threads. I must have really bad luck with hard drives or something. I keep having problem after problem. Ok, here's my problem.

I have a 640GB HDD (has data on it) and 2x500GB(new). I want to run the 500gb drives in raid. So i go to install xp with all drives plugged in. XP tries to set the 640gb as the C: drive. So i disconnect the 640gb drive and proceed to install xp on my raid 0 which now can be assigned "C:". After the installation i try to plug the 640gb back in. But windows doesn't boot. In the bios,, the 1st boot priority is set to the raid0. I think this might have something to do with my 640gb drive wanting to be the c: drive.

Could some help. Thanks in advance.

[Mr.Guvernment]

go into your bios and make sure you have the right drive set to boot from?

i know some bios you have boot drives and boot order , sometimes tou need to set it in more then one place.

the other drive should not matter, it is the bios that will determine which drive to boot from..

can you format the 640G drive?

since you have an intel board and it is set in raid you shoudl be able to hot swap plug in the 640G while the system is already in windows, this could let you change the drive letter.

[tester3000]

Wow,, never thought of hot plugging it. Never did that before. I've always been tought to turn off power before messing around inside. Hotplugging the drive in windows works. But once i reboot, it doesn't load windows. I already set the boot disk priority to:
1. Raid 0
2. Raid 1
3. 640gb drive

I get a message saying:
"Windows could not start because <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll is missing

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the 640G used to be my primary OS drive with an OS and a DATA partition. I deleted the OS partition with Norton Partition Magic and merged the free space into the DATA partition. For some reason there is 8mb of unallocated space at the beginning of the drive. Don't know why it didn't get merged into my DATA partition.

Thanks for your time and help.

[tester3000]

I changed the drive letter of the 640G to "S",, but it still comes up with the same error message when i reboot. I have a feeling that for some reason it is trying to boot off the 640G instead the the RAID. I had XP and WIN7 installed on the 640G before i deleted those partition. Could that have something to do with it? I don't really want to reformat the drive because it has a whole hunk of data that i would have to back up somewhere. Even if it is trying to boot the 640G,, nothing should happen, right? No windows means no boot. There should be a sould not find file error.

Could someone please help. Thanks a lot.

[cw823]

You should have options in the BIOS not only to, say, tell it to boot from cd before hard drive, but on that same screen (or the one prior) you should have one where you can configure your drives, storage options maybe? You're hard drives are in the wrong order in that screen, so when it boots from the hard drive, it boots from the wrong one.

[RJARRRPCGP]

It's booting off of a valid Windows installation, but fails to complete loading of a required file.

It can only mean one of two things:

1. The file system is corrupted.

2. The PC is unstable.

You wouldn't even get that error if the wrong HDD was selected.

[cw823]

It's booting off of a valid Windows installation, but fails to complete loading of a required file.

It can only mean one of two things:

1. The file system is corrupted.

2. The PC is unstable.

You wouldn't even get that error if the wrong HDD was selected.

???? :confused:

OP. In your first post you said you disconnected the 640Gb after you started the install. You disconnected it, rebooted, and restarted setup, right?

[tester3000]

???? :confused:

OP. In your first post you said you disconnected the 640Gb after you started the install. You disconnected it, rebooted, and restarted setup, right?

Yep, did exactly that. Disconnected the 640GB drive,, then installed windows. Everything went fine. Windows was up and running fine. But as soon as i plug the old 640GB back in. It give me the missing dll error at boot. It must be booting something or else it would just stop there. I have a strong feeling that this has something to do with the fact that this used to be my primary os drive. I didn't format the whole drive. I just deleted the OS partition in merged the unallocated space into my data partition.

Thanks for your quick replies.

[tester3000]

Here's what my bios screen looks like.
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/3635/img1242na2.jpg

Is there a way to change the SCSI number? Like my 640G drive is listed as SCSI-0.

[tuskenraider]

Here's what my bios screen looks like.


Is there a way to change the SCSI number? Like my 640G drive is listed as SCSI-0.Sure. Change the physical ports the drives are on, which will mess up your RAID arrays........

[cw823]

Sure. Change the physical ports the drives are on, which will mess up your RAID arrays........

They will? Hmmm, I've not seen that before on intel raid arrays. SCSI, maybe.

[tester3000]

I decided to try reinstalling windows with all drives connected. This time my 640GB showed up as E. My C partition showed up as C. So i deleted the C partition and installed windows. Everything thing went fine this time. Thanks for all your help guys. For anyone else with this type of problem here what i did.

1) Install windows on RAID0 with 640GB unplugged
2) Plugged in 640GB while in windows and changed the drive letter to 's'
3) Reinstalled windows with all drives plugged in.

RAID has been a lot of trouble for me but in the end i think that it's work it. Love seeing windows load after 1 bar. Almost constant 250mb/s read speed off the windows partition of the raid0 (200GB). 12.5ms access time. Don't care about the 7% cpu as i haven't oc'd my e8400 yet (because i reset bios a 100 times lol).
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2668/hdtunebenchmarkintelraipt9.png

[tuskenraider]

They will? Hmmm, I've not seen that before on intel raid arrays. SCSI, maybe. I know I've accidently swapped cables with my two drives in RAID0 while doing things in my case in the past and failed to boot.

[tester3000]

I know I've accidently swapped cables with my two drives in RAID0 while doing things in my case in the past and failed to boot.

Thanks. I will keep that in mind. Wasn't aware that you can't switch sata ports in a raid array. I just though that the raid controlled would keep the serial number of the drives saved so that no matter which port you hook up to, the controller knows which drive is which.