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I just installed a new 80GB SATA Drive alongside my old IDE drive which holds my Windows XP installation. I used Partition Magic to format the new drive and clone my IDE partition to the SATA drive. When windows booted up it asked me to select which OS to run (since I now had to Windows installations). So I thought, ok, now I can format my IDE partition and use my SATA as the primary drive. I did this in Partition Magic and changed my SATA drive to C:. Then rebooted and now Windows is not starting, it says "Windows does not recognize the boot device, Please insert or select a proper boot device". What do I do now to boot up into Windows from my SATA drive? My old IDE drive is completely wiped clean since I copied the partition to the SATA drive. Please help because this is driving me crazy!

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Dani AI

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Most likely cause: the boot loader (the small "system" area that holds the MBR/boot sector and the XP boot files like NTLDR/NTDETECT.COM/boot.ini) remained on the old IDE disk and was removed when you formatted it. That leaves the cloned Windows files on the SATA drive but no active boot code to start them. Other possibilities are that the cloned partition is not marked Active, the BIOS is still trying to boot the old device, or the SATA controller mode (IDE/AHCI) now differs from how Windows was installed.

Quick checklist to try (do these in order; avoid more formatting/writing to disks until you have a working backup/image):

  • Verify BIOS: confirm the SATA disk is detected and set as the first boot device. Also check the SATA mode (IDE/compatibility vs AHCI) — set it to the mode that matched your original install if unsure.

  • Inspect the cloned partition: boot a rescue/live CD (WinPE, Linux live, GParted, etc.) and confirm the root of the SATA drive contains the Windows folder and files such as ntldr and ntdetect.com. If those files are missing the clone did not copy the boot files.

  • Ensure the partition is marked Active/Bootable. Many cloning tools copy data but not the partition "system" flag or MBR correctly.

  • If ntldr/ntdetect.com are missing, copy them from an XP source into the root of the SATA C:. Create or fix boot.ini so it points at the correct disk/partition. A typical boot.ini for XP on the first partition looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

If those steps do not restore booting, use a Windows recovery environment (as suggested) or a boot utility to repair the MBR/boot sector and then retry. If the clone itself looks incomplete (missing \Windows or big parts of System32), re-clone after imaging the original disk first. Do not rerun destructive formats until the boot problem is diagnosed.

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Member Avatar for fry

can you boot in recovery console? you need to fix your master boot record. look

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