Windows XP

[MackemX]

Well I will start with phbalerao. When I turn on the pc, all the lights light up just fine. But when I try to boot it up normally, the hard drive light stops flickering at the WinXp logo screen.

have you tried the option were it lists all the files it's loading and not the XP logo?

I can't remember which option it is offhand using F8, not sure if it's directory services restore mode or debugging. You didn't quote this on your options before though so maybe Home is different

if you do manage to see the files does it stop in the same place each time?

Can I still install xp on that 3gb sob that still has a few files on it?

you should be able to

[g_shocker182]

"have you tried the option were it lists all the files it's loading and not the XP logo? "

Yeah, but the option gets rid of the DELL logo, not WinXP. Tomorrow I will master the 3gb sob and slave the 60. I will report back tom. evening .

Time for bed

[gmatov]

OK, here's another silly question.

Since you haven't installed the 120, why don't you do it now? Fdisk, partition, if you want, format, install a clean copy of XP.

Unless there is something electrically or mechanically wrong with your old drive, all the programs will still be installed on it, and you simply have to make shortcuts to those programs on that drive, to run them.

There is no law that says a program must be installed to the C:\drive. With 4 drives, I have programs installed on the P:\drive that I run, no problem.

Here's your chance to get that drive installed. And when you do, run Scan Disk on the old drive, might repair whatever your problem was.

[The village idiot]

I'd copy the important files before running scandisk.

[gmatov]

Village,

I should have said that. Should be the first thing to do. After all, Shocker's biggest concern is the papers on the old drive.

Not as a hijack, but where is everybody?

Cheers,

George

[indolikaa]

I'm here. Tonight's entertainment is exceptional.

[gmatov]

Great, but you're one of a bunch. Are they ALL students?

[The village idiot]

The last few days have been real slow. Except for the people that have been downloading AVI's and need to convert. You can always tell when a bunch of people get a highspeed connection when they go off the school. The news groups always get all mucked up.

[arcorob]

Okay, now we know what the problem is. And cloning your drive will not work.

You have directory damage. When you shutdown, you must have clobbered some critical files. What happens is a write, a delete or a create (which is a write), gets interrupted and improperly flagged. By that I mean free space could be pointing into a file OR a file could be marked as freespace...etc.

The FIX is to run scandisk which you cannot do. Unless you can get into safe mode, set the flag to run SCANDISK at the next boot.

Then the repair will work. If you cant fix the drive, repair is useless.It will not write to what it knows is a corrupted drive.

So how do you get it going ?

Go ahead and make it a slave. Boot the NEWER C: drive and force a scandisk on the old C: drive to fix up the drive. You will lose some clusters but should not be too bad.

Now swap it back BUT before you reboot, run the INSTALL = Y, XP Detected, run REPAIR as I told you earlier. All wil then be back to normal.

[g_shocker182]

When I set the drives up, (normal one as WinXP master, corrupted one as slave) the computer does not detect the new one, which it will detect if I leave it as a one drive master machine.

I may have done something wrong the the power, ide, jumper settings. Is there anything I should check or do when I set up the slave/ master combo w/i the computer as detailed above? I might have done something I forgot not to do...

[gmatov]

Shocker,

Set them both as CS, Cable Select, put the 120 on the end of the cable, the 60, inner connector.

I think you are going to have to run fdisk, and if you want to keep it as one large partition, tell it so, then set it as the Active partition. As is now, your Active partition is on the second drive, so far as DOS is concerned, and this is not allowed.

Shut down and reboot, then format. I don't know if there even IS a boot disk for XP, but you can use a 98 disk for that, if you download the large drive version of Command, from MS site, and use to make a new Boot floppy.

You MAY have to do this with just the new drive installed, then plug in the old

The file for Large Drive is 263044USA8.exe, 176KB, do a search, or I could mail to you if you're on a slow pipe with the antique.

I hope this works. Since I don't know XP, it's also possible you could boot from the CD, with the second drive out of the machine. I think XP allows you to format, doesn't it, especially to NTFS?

Sorry to be so long winded.

Cheers,

George.

[g_shocker182]

Gmatov, you always have an answer, thank you!

Shocker,

Set them both as CS, Cable Select, put the 120 on the end of the cable, the 60, inner connector.

Cable Select being the 3rd or end from the master jumper setting?

The file for Large Drive is 263044USA8.exe, 176KB, do a search, or I could mail to you if you're on a slow pipe with the antique.

Thank you, but I do have WAN.

I hope this works. Since I don't know XP, it's also possible you could boot from the CD, with the second drive out of the machine. I think XP allows you to format, doesn't it, especially to NTFS?

Should it not work, I will try to reinstall without formatting. I will search for that option. I think I could partition the files already on there and just install onto a blank patrition. Can I do this?


Thanks

[RabidDog]

windows repair cd should be your first option. Full re-install of xp your 2nd option ifyou can get hold of full install Cd. It wont overwrite your documents even if you re-install to the same partition.
BUT get hold of a partition manager floppy disk set (2 disks) and run that.. sound s like you may have screwed up your boot partition. partition mgr floppy disk set can fix many problems and also scandisk your hard drive for problems. In win/xp you should in theory be able to resize partitions from within windows this is not a good idea .
is it an IBM hard drive? (abandon all hope if yes)
I have re-installed and repaired two times too many recently.

[gmatov]

Shocker,

I thought you said the drive had not been used yet. If you HAVE used it as a storage drive, don't worry about partitioning, just now.

Just try to install to the drive. Windows will assign space to itself for the OS.
And, it will not write over your stored files.

For you to have written to it, it has to have been formatted, whether by XP when you set it to slave, or by you with DOS.

George

[flaninacupboard]

if it's not playing, the foolproof way is to set both drives to "cable select" instead of specifying master or slave. then simply note which is which in the bios, and tell it to boot from the relevant drive.

[g_shocker182]

OK, here's the settings:

Master: one with new XP
Slave: old one with necessary info

I boot up to the new hd with XP. NOW I get a blank screen after the WinXP logo screen.

Have broken cordless phone in fit of rage.

[pixel]

I had this problem, I swapped my hard drives and had this. It may be the boot directory is on the slave disk, but it needs to be the master to point to the proper boot disk.

I think that was already mentioned above.

[g_shocker182]

Any solutions pixel?

[gmatov]

Shocker,

What do you mean with "Master....new XP"? Have you installed it as Master, the 60 as slave?

Have you run the BIOS to detect the drives? Have you tried with just the 120 installed? One of these scenarios has to have worked.

You are running a near 2 gig CPU, that means the board is recent enough to recognize your drive parameters..

Pull drive 2, install, re-install drive 2. You do have a restore/install disk, riight?
As I mentioned before, the restore disk has the full install files on one of them as well. You may have to go to DOS, and I don't even knbow if XP will listen to DOs, but all computers will install from DOS. I should qualify that, my W2k says it must install from mwithin Windows, but yours should not, as it's a catastrophy recovery..

More info, please. Will help all I can.

George

[pixel]

Sorry g_shocker, I couldn't reply since the site was down.

What I did was use Norton Ghost to copy my OS drive (was master at the time) to another drive (was slave at the time), but when I had taken the original (master drive) out, and left the new drive as a slave I couldn't get past the windows loading screen. This was because the original master wasn't there to tell the computer to boot from the main drive.

If you installed XP onto the new drive whilst it was set as slave, the other drive will have had the necessary boot info to point to that drive since it is windows which only checks the master drive for boot info.

If you then swapped the drives to make the new one master, it will have not have had the necessary info for booting, but windows will not check the other drive because it is slave. If this is what you did, try reinstalling XP on the new drive whilst it is set as master.

If you did not do what I described above, you may have set the jumpers wrong.

Hope one of these solves your problem.

[g_shocker182]

Well, i decided to redo the damn thing.:

1.) I found another IDE cable
2.) I found a spare 20gb hd
3.) Installed XP on the 20
4.) 20 is now the single, master hd
5.) The greatest point of all:




THE COMPUTER WORKS






Buying a newer dual IDE cable is now on my to-do list.

[MackemX]

so can you access your old HD contents?

did you try the method I suggested earlier by copying the files across?

it may just work like it did for me and then you will get your old OS sytem back

[RabidDog]

definitely check 1) your ide cable 2) your drive settings.. set one as master and one as slave dont leave either as cable select.
I had a problem with cdr/dvd not working together took everything out of the box, smashed my head against the wall very hard! changed the ide cable plugged everythinh back in and its all been fine since. Maybe plug both drives into seperate ide cables on their own, no other drives and see if they are both detected.

[gmatov]

Pixel,

You can install to any of the 4 IDE devices, so long as you set the BIOS to boot from that drive.

Remember, you did, at one time, set it to boot 1st, Floppy, 2nd, IDE0, or 1, whatever your BIOS calls it, 3rd, CD-ROM.. You also had an option to check other devices. Instead of the CD you could have told it to check HDD2 for the MBR, then it would have booted from the second HDD, if it had a boot record on it.

Shocker,

Have you yet tried to get the 60 reading yet? It is possible it is a bad drive, I just recently put an old 4.3 gig into the machine I'm putting together for my granddaughter, plug it in, locks the machine, that's with a good 40 as Primary Master. Remove, normal boot, bad drive, if that happened to you, hope the files you need were on the 120. Hell, the 120 might be the one that's screwed, but at least it should still be under warranty.

George

[g_shocker182]

george,

I didn't use the 120, just an old 3gb (old, very old - I ASSUMED i DIDN'T NEED A BIG HD JUST FOR XP; sorry caps lock was on). The dual IDE cable I used originally was also very old, I mean it predated 300MHz machines).

All in all, my theory is that it was a mix of problems, one caused another, etc. Replacing the cables and such is a lot was easier because it was more of a physical aspect. I will try the new IDE cable with the 60, and will definitly be buying a new dual one for around 2 bucks online.

Will keep you posted.

[Heavensent]

maybe enable auto detect in the bios?
at least you will see if the bios says its there or not.

[g_shocker182]

Auto-Detect is always on for me.

The problems been fixed but thanks anyway.