Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

I have recently installed a new hard drive into my PC on which I installed Windows. I transferred all my stuff over to it, all goodies.

Now, I would like to format the "old" drive (C) and use drive D and E (E being a partition especially for Windows). The old hard drive (C) is IDE-1 and the new one is IDE-0.

I tried to set IDE-0 as the first boot device but when I do that, nothing happens, I just get the black screen and a tiny little line flashing in the upper left corner. I then have to restart and restore IDE-1 as the first boot device.

I was thinking of formatting C but if it won't start up after I've gotten rid of it, I can't really do it.

I think it's something to do with having E (Part of D) as a partition with Windows on it. I don't think it knows that it should look at E and not at D (Storage).

Other things I can tell you:

Info: http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/1949/infoxl3.jpg

HDs: http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/7178/hdsan9.jpg



Any advice would be greatly appreciated,

Cristalle

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

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Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Hello, Cristalle. When you installed a second windows xp OS in the E: volume it did not alter your boot.ini file in C:\, did not install in the root of your new volume E: the files to load the OS. That is because it detected the old OS. If you check in your disk management console you will see that C: is the system drive [contains what some of us call the boot files in the root which load the system files which can be in another volume] and E: is your boot drive [which naturally is not the drive containing the files which "boot" the OS, but the files which are loaded by them... ie, your new OS].
Don't blame me, that is the way M$ uses those terms, boot and system.
And that is why Windows will not let you format C:, it knows it will not be able to start.
You marked D: as your Active partition - it contains the boot sector code which would normally load the files in its root which load Windows. But they are not there. And they cannot be in E: because it is a logical partition.
But no problem. We have to make D: your System partition.
Firstly, in an explorer window you must alter the Tools, Folder options, View settings to show Protected OS files [uncheck that option].
=Check in your E: drive for two files E:\ntldr, E:\ntdetect.com. Not there? Ok, just copy them over from C:\ to D:\. I repeat, to D:\
Next post here a copy of your boot.ini file. You can just drag it into an open notepad from C:\, else go Start, run, paste in..
control sysdm.cpl,,3 -Startup n Recovery settings, press Edit.
We will alter it to load your new OS directly from E:
Or... you can do this yourself:
Edit your boot.ini to look like this one:

[boot loader]
timeout=4
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

...note those two partition(2)....
-save it to D:\
Hide those OpSys files again.
Restart. Might work. :)
[Are they cats, or something?]

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Thanks for your post! Maybe I read it wrong or ... I installed Windows on E, not on D. D is just storage and doesn't contain any Windows files. E is the one that has my Documents and Settings, Program Files and Windows. With that said, do I still have to move those files to D?

I kinda marked it Active because I thought it would make it start up~ I didn't really know what Active meant so... Hehe


P.S. Well Cookie is the cat, the other two are me and my boyfriend :]

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Heya, Cristalle, yep, from your second pic I can see that Windows is installed on E: [the "boot" drive], which is a logical partition in an extended partition. Which is fine, but you can only mark a primary partition as Active, and you have done that- D: is Active. D: being the Active partition means it must also contain the boot or loader files [ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini] because .... well, how much do you wish to know..?
Startup: ...this will be a very brief version of the chain of events!..... BIOS whirs, searches for the master boot record on the master disk [your Disk 00]. The MBR's partition table for the whole disk is read, logical partitions in an extended partition are successively investigated and the single, active partition is noted, the mbr code is loaded into memory, and BIOS hands control to that. The mbr code directs operations to the partition marked as active, specifically to its boot sector. All partitions contain the same boot sector code, but only that active partition's boot sector code is loaded; it assumes control and searches for certain files in the root of that partition. If your OS is XP then ntldr will be read into RAM and ntdetect.com will examine your hardware [and either BIOS or Windows will assign resources to them depending on whether you have ACPI].
ntldr will read boot.ini..... an on it goes.

You can check yourself that a logical drive cannot be Active - try to make it active with Disk Mgmt - the option just will not exist. You can see that C: is the System drive -that is where those 2 files plus boot.ini are right now, but BIOS cannot see them because it is not looking at that hard disk, and if it did then the partition is not active, so...
So, yep, copy those two files into D:\, make a boot.ini and copy that in also.
"Well Cookie is the cat, the other two are..." See? I know stuff.... :)

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Woo! A lot of stuff! :]

Yeah I done it but I'm scared to restart my computer now~ hehe.

I followed it to the tee so it shouldn't be a problem.

Do I delete those files off of C now or do I just leave em there too? (Boot.ini, etc)



[Yeah you're clever, actually we're all supposed to be cats :P]

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Ok so I got the courage to restart and nothing bad happened~ Phew!

So I guess it's all good now? Can I format C now? It's still calling it System and the other Active though which is a bit weird. What does that mean? Is it bad? No hope for me?! :( .

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Oh~ It's still not letting me format. Looks like everything has reverted back to the way it was. But I did save the boot.ini to D so :-O

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

The way Windows Setup works can be quite confusing... was the old disk with C: on it still IDE-0 when you installed XP on the other disk?
And you changed the Active partition setting from C: to D: yourself? [if you had tried to restart after that you should have gotten a "ntldr is missing" message and a blue screen].
Anyway... it reverted? Right...
=temporarily edit the boot.ini file in D:\ to look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=6
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Prof D:" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

-then during login you will be certain which boot.ini is being used- if it is this one then you will actually see the menu. The second line I added is a nonsense for your sys, something has to be there otherwise you will not see the menu; do NOT choose it, just let the menu timeout to default after 6 secs.
=Check, or set, D: to be Active, that ntldr and ntdetect.com [and boot.ini] are in D:\.
=Shut down and restart into BIOS, set to boot from cd and insert your XP cd, boot into the Recovery Console by typing R to Repair when given the choice during Setup. [If the sys manages to boot into Windows again accidentally then it may revert the settings above; redo them]
Let the loading of Recovery Console run to the point where it asks if you wish to start in E:\Windows, type 1 and Enter.
Now at the E:\WINDOWS prompt type..
fixboot D: -and Enter, and to the write query answer y and Enter again. Now type...
fixboot C: -Enter and answer y, Enter..... Type exit to quit, the sys should commence a restart.
=Restart into BIOS, set IDE-0 as boot device and let the system boot.
That should do the trick. Say what happens.... and if all is good edit boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=6
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="MouMou's Windows Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

You can put whatever you like in there....
I for one don wanna be a cat... a couple of the things they do I find disturbing.

Re: Hard drives C D E and IDEs
 

Hiya Gerbil,

C was always IDE-1 and now E is IDE-0.

"And you changed the Active partition setting from C: to D: yourself?"
I didn't switch it over, C was always (System) and when I right-clicked D I had the option to set it as (Active) so C never had (Active) next to it.

Also one thing about the booting thing, in the very early stages of boot I get the two options of "which ones of these do you want to start up, choose before the time runs out" or something of the sort and I have the first one and second one on the list which looks like that:

"Windows XP Professional"
"Windows XP Professional"

The first one is D/E, the newest XP.
The second one is C which I don't use anymore.

That's why I wanna format C, so then I won't have that option at boot up and it will just go directly into D/E.

I'll go try what you said now!


Yeah they are pretty disgusting in some stuff, but I never think of that ;)