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HDD boot problem

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Pntgrd

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2001
I decided to put together a faster system for my daughter to replace a 500mhz Celeron Compaq box she has used for years. I came up with the parts and was going to use her existing drives. I had replaced the HDD a couple of years back with a 40g Maxtor. I put the stuff together but the thing would not see the Maxtor as a Boot Device, meaning it would never get past the "press key to boot from CD" message. The bios see it and even Windows Repair sees the XP install on it, just will not boot to it. I tried running a Windows Repair function but same result. Changing to Boot order to the HDD first results in a black screen with a cursor blinking in the top left corner. I put another drive I had laying around in it and it booted right up with it. I then took the Maxtor and put it back in the Compaq and yep, you guessed it, booted right up. I ran PowerMax on it and it passed all the tests. I put it back in the new system, no boot again. Needless to say, extreemly frustrating. Now, on a wild hair, I decided to try an experiment. I Ghosted the 40g Maxtor to the 80g WD. To my surprise it worked like a charm. Whatever is causing the problem on the Maxtor did not transfer to the WD.

My question is does anybody know what the problem could be with the Maxtor? It is like when I did the original install in the Compaq box it put some kind of propietary Compaq BS on the drive that won't let it transfer to another system. I do know that there is a small (15meg) unallocated partition on the drive that I did not put there. I had originally made it only one partition with all space allocated to the one. I am really interested in why this did this. I have never ran across it before.
 
Double check the jumpers on the Maxtor to make sure it is set to Master or Cable Select (try switching between them). Since you have a ghost copy of the drive you could try reformatting it on the new system and using ghost to move the image from the 80GB WD back to the 40GB Maxtor.
 
Duke, I tried both Master and CS, neither worked. As for ghosting back to the 40g, I didn't think you could go to a smaller target disc. And finding the reason why has become a quest of some sort. I have asked 2 friends in the IT business and they have never ran across this either.
 
Pntgrd said:
I decided to put together a faster system for my daughter to replace a 500mhz Celeron Compaq box she has used for years. I came up with the parts and was going to use her existing drives. I had replaced the HDD a couple of years back with a 40g Maxtor. I put the stuff together but the thing would not see the Maxtor as a Boot Device, meaning it would never get past the "press key to boot from CD" message. The bios see it and even Windows Repair sees the XP install on it, just will not boot to it. I tried running a Windows Repair function but same result. Changing to Boot order to the HDD first results in a black screen with a cursor blinking in the top left corner. I put another drive I had laying around in it and it booted right up with it. I then took the Maxtor and put it back in the Compaq and yep, you guessed it, booted right up. I ran PowerMax on it and it passed all the tests. I put it back in the new system, no boot again. Needless to say, extreemly frustrating. Now, on a wild hair, I decided to try an experiment. I Ghosted the 40g Maxtor to the 80g WD. To my surprise it worked like a charm. Whatever is causing the problem on the Maxtor did not transfer to the WD.

My question is does anybody know what the problem could be with the Maxtor? It is like when I did the original install in the Compaq box it put some kind of propietary Compaq BS on the drive that won't let it transfer to another system. I do know that there is a small (15meg) unallocated partition on the drive that I did not put there. I had originally made it only one partition with all space allocated to the one. I am really interested in why this did this. I have never ran across it before.


That 15MB partition is for disaster recovery. The PC boots from that when you select it right after POST, then it will instruct you to place your CD-ROM in the drive where it will continue your recovery.
 
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