help add new HD and remove old

[drsangha]

I'm not sure if this category is where this post belongs. I used to have one 20 gig HD (C that ran win98. Then I bought a new 40gig HD and WinXP and added this new HD and installed WinXP on it from within Win 98 and it became my D: drive and I had the multiple OS screen come up at bootup to choose which OS to use. Now I want to get a new HD (120gig) for more storage and I am ready to retire my old HD (the C: drive with win98, which i no longer use). My question is since I had installed my WinXP on D: drive from Win98 on my C: drive, if I pull the C: drive out will the computer boot from the D: drive automatically. (I'm afraid that it won't since the initial boot info for the multiple OS setup must be on the C: drive). Also, when adding the new 120 gig HD (which I just want as storage, no OS installed) should I install it in place of the old C: drive (the master on primary IDE) or should I switch my old D: drive to this position and place the new drive as the slave. My other (secondary) IDE port has a DVD and CDW on it which I want to keep on the same IDE port as these are both slower, at least I think thats the best configuration, let me know if I am wrong. Thanks

 

[4Ryan6]

If you pull the C drive, The D drive becomes the C drive, and if its a full operating system it should boot on is on, if the partition is set active. Pull the C drive and see what happens, if you've installed WinXP on a FAT32 partition, instead of NTFS, you should be able, from a 3 1/2" floppy bootdisk, to use FDISK, and set the partition as active, but be careful don't delete the partition.





Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

 

[khha4113]

If you pull the C drive, The D drive becomes the C drive, and if its a full operating system it should boot on is on, if the partition is set active

I'm not sure it would boot since WinXP's bootloader and other boot files (Boot.ini, Ntdetedt.com and Ntdlr) probably are on C: drive (Win 98). You have to move these files to WinXP drive and edit <b>Boot.ini</b> to direct where it supposes to look for WinXP installation. Furthermore, you need to repair WinXP's bootloader so it can boot the D: drive into WinXP.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[drsangha]

Ok, more details, the C: (win98) drive is Fat32 and the D: (WinXP) drive is NTFS. If I have to move the files like boot.ini and ntldr where do I find them on C: and where do I move them to on D:. Also, if I remove the current C: drive, how do I set the D: drive's partition to active? Can I do this by booting from the WinXP CD?

 

[khha4113]

Boot.ini, Ntdetect.com and NTdlr are system files reside in boot sector (eg. C:\boot.ini) hidden from normal view. You need to change Folder options\View to show hidden files.
Copy all 3 files to D:\ (you have to do this in WinXP since Win 98 can't see NTFS system). Edit <b>boot.ini</b> (Using Notepad) by deleting the line that shows
<b>C:\"Microsoft Windows"</b>
and check other lines (you should've had 2 lines exactly the same) similar to this
<b>multi(0)disk(0)<font color=red>rdisk(1)</font color=red>partition(1)\WINDOWS</b>
Only if the phrase is <b>rdisk<font color=red>(1)</font color=red></b> then you need to change to <b>rdisk<font color=blue>(0)</b></font color=blue> on <b>both</b> lines.
Remove your old drive out and make your new drive <b>Master</b> (remember to reset its jumper setting accordingly). Set your comp's BIOS so you can boot CD first. Boot your WinXP CD, and when in its Setup menu, choose <b>Repair</b>. It should show on screen your WinXP's installation as <b>1:WINDOWS</b>. Press <b>1</b> at command line and provide administrator password when asked. At command prompt, type "<b>fixboot</b>" (w/o quotation marks) to setup WinXP bootloader. When it's done, type <b>EXIT</b> to restart your computer.

Good or Bad have no meaning at all, depends on what your point of view is.

 

[4Ryan6]

Before you worry about moving the files have you pulled the C drive and tried to boot without it, to see what will happen you can always change it back if it won't boot.

A simpler test would be to change the boot sequence in the CMOS from HDD-0 to HDD-1 and reboot and see what happens.


Details, Details, Its all in the Details, If you need help, Don't leave out the Details.

 

[drsangha]

Those both sound like good ideas, but I think I will actually disconnect the C drive to make sure the D drive isnt reading anything off it to boot. I'll try this later and let you know what happpened.