Boot Issues with new Win XP install

[Bubacus]

I just built a new PC. I grabbed my old IDE hard drive as a back up and used my new SATA drive as the primary. The IDE hard drive already had a copy of windows, and a whole lotta other stuff I wanted to keep. I installed Win XP and what happened is that the install kept the IDE drive labeled as C and the SATA as F. After I loaded up windows, I deleted the copy of windows on the IDE drive. Before windows loads, I kept getting the screen that gives you a choice of what OS to load. To try and by pass that screen I disconnected the IDE drive, and I got an error message on the post.....Boot Disk Not Found, Please Insert Boot Disk and press any Key. So I tried to reattach the hard drive, it still did not boot.

My Question, can I avoid having to reinstall XP again some how? Is there a way to boot just from the F Drive?

If I reformat,This time around I would just have the SATA in place and then add on the IDE latter. No biggie if I have to re-install.

Thanks

Asus A8N SLI-Deluxe
EVGA 7800 GT CO
2 GIGs OCZ Platinum 2-3-2-5
Maxtor 200 gig 7800 SATA
Maxtor 120 gig 7800 IDE

 

[pscowboy]

Procedures you should have done:

Disconnect the IDE temporarily.
Install new XP on the SATA; and get it running perfectly with all the procedures that entails.
Change boot order in BIOS to show first hard drive to be the SATA (Rom & floppy always should be first & second).
Reconnect the IDE.

Redo the SATA drive as per above. But first, delete the partition on the SATA using fdisk from a 98 boot floppy. Be sure to ESC out and reboot to effect changes. DO NOT FORMAT HERE!

Pop in the XP, and do a fresh install opting for the long NTFS format during the install process.

 

[fedude]

Is there any way to just stop the OS selection screen from coming up or is a complete reformat/reinstall his only choice.

I have the same problem....

 

[pscowboy]

Reinstall as per my post.

You'll be glad you went through that bit involved process, because everything will work right.

 

[fedude]

You can remove the dual boot by editing boot.ini. Google it to find out how.