hard drive errors

[mackab24]

hi all just added a new hard drive to my pc but for some reason im getting an error message reading NTLDR. The new drive is working fine but when i try booting from the old drive i keep getting the same error message. when i go into the cmos screen the computer can detect the 2 hard drives but will not allow me to boot from the old one. can anyone give me some info about this problem and ways to fix it? thanks

[puzzlesRus]

Is the new hard drive set as primary master and is the order of booting in the bios set to drive 0 being the first.? Please list the contents of your boot.ini file from the new drive and report back.

[rojash]

If you are using Ultra DMA cables you should set the jumpers on both drives to CS (Cable Select) and make sure that the old drive is at the end of the cable.

[mackab24]

the primary master drive is the old drive, and the new one is set as the secondary ide slave. i can not find out how to change the boot order to 0, and i am using ide cables.

[puzzlesRus]

If you look in your system bios, it will show the order of booting. Normally, drive 0 would come before drive1. If this is the case, can you list the contentsof your boot.ini file on that drive. Also, is the windows directory shown as WINDOWS or WINNT ?(Both drives)

[mackab24]

no sorry when i go into the bios it gives me a list of drives to boot from by name not numbers. i have changed the hard drives so that the old oneis the primary slave and the new one is the primary master but still to no avail. i dont no how to find the boot.ini file????

[mackab24]

it shows as windows on the new one but the old one i cant boot it to find out

[puzzlesRus]

Right. So your NEW drive is the primary master. If you click on drive D in MY COMPUTER, then identify your Windows directory, is it shown as WINDOWS or WINNT ?

As regards boot.ini, it is the one on Drive C that you want to find. It is probably hidden , so you will need to MY COMPUTER>TOOLS>FOLDER OPTIONS>VIEW and then select SHOW HIDDEN FILES

[puzzlesRus]

Sorry, I hadn't finished - deselect HIDE PROTECTED OPERATING SYSTEM FILES.

Then go to drive C and you should see boot.ini.

Click on the file and copy/paste the details into your reply.. This may well be where the problem lies

[mackab24]

are u online now

[puzzlesRus]

Yes

[mackab24]

if i do a system repair will i lose the software that is in installed

[puzzlesRus]

No - but what about the boot.ini file. Have you found it yet ?

I

[mackab24]

no its my friends pc but all i have done is installed the other hard drive and it stopped the other hard drive from working, so how can i find the boot.ini file if i cant start it up

[puzzlesRus]

You don't need to boot to it, inorder to access it. You can access it via your new hard drive

[puzzlesRus]

Got to go now. Let me know if you still need further advice

[mackab24]

ok i will thanks but my old hard drive is windows xp pro abd my new one is runnind home edition

[puzzlesRus]

The fact that the two drives have different operating systems should not present a problem.

Now, let me see if I have got this right.

Your friend has a Pc which originally had a bootable hard drive with Windows XP Pro. You then fitted a new hard drive, presumably with a pre-installed operating system of XP Home edition. The original drive was subsequently connected as a primary slave drive and the new one as primary master. The PC will now only boot to the new drive,. even though the system bios recognizes both.

This seems to point to either a jumper problem on the old drive or a boot.ini problem.

As previously mentioned, If you friend is able to boot to the new hard drive, he/she, should still be able to access the contents of the old drive, which should be drive D.

I need to know the name of the windows folder on both drives and the contents of the boot.ini file on both.

[mackab24]

ok thanks i will find out tomorrow and i will reply about 3
oclock

[mackab24]

ok i have got the new hard drive running on windows home edition which works fine it is set to primary master. the old drive is set as secondary slave due to when i put the old drive as primary slave it is not reconised and the jumpers are set properly. i can now see both the new drive and old drive when i open up my computer, but now it is saying its empty but we have not formated it. when i try booting from the old drive i still get the error message ntldr is missing. when i look on the new drive for the boot.ini file i cant see it i can only see a file named boot, this is wat it says:[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

[puzzlesRus]

Right. The file you accessed, IS your boot.ini file and the only thing wrong with it is that instead of home edition the wording should be changed to PROFFESSIONAL (at least this is what you told me was installed on your old drive)

I take it that when the boot menu appeared on your screen, you tried to access the old drive by selecting the second menu item and of course, the system was searching for files which were not there. Having rebooted and selected menu option 2, you successfully got into Windows on your new drive..

You say that there is nothing showing in drive D. Are you sure ? I would have thought that you would have got a different error message, like "no operating system" What size of disk is reported for drive d and what free space ?