stupid.

[kré]

problem with parents-in-law's computer:

* 40Gb HD (D1) started doing click of death
* purchased 80Gb HD (D2)
* used Norton Ghost to create an exact copy of everything from 40Gb to 80Gb
* rebooted machine and changed bios to boot machine from 80Gb
* booted ok from 80Gb as D: and 40Gb as C:
* removed 40Gb drive and attempted to boot
* got past black Windows XP Professional screen with the scrolling bar thing at the bottom and went to the first 'blue screen' that normally says welcome, but it just gave showed the Windows XP logo, and went nowhere from there, and I could do nothing (although interestingly, the StickyKeys thing works when you hit Shift 5 times, but I was unable to get Task Manager to load up or anything else)
* put the 40Gb drive back in and it booted fine again
assuming it just wouldnt boot without the other drive because it would have only had a D: drive and no C: drive, used partition manager to swap drive letters
* rebooted with both drives in and it booted ok
* took the 40Gb drive out and it got to the aforementioned blue screen
* put the 40Gb drive back in the machine and formatted it
* rebooted with the 40Gb drive in this time, and got the the blue screen again.

obviously it was still booting with something on the 40Gb drive, but buggered if i know why or how.

not sure what to do from here without losing the data on the 80Gb drive.

any ideas?

one thing i can think of is to boot from the XP CD and run some kind of repair on the Windows installation? Is this my only hope (of saving hours upon hours of reinstalling software and shit? coz i ain't getting paid for this)?

[MisterBishi]

I did something similar recently and had to use XP's 'Disk Management' to set the new drive as the boot device.

Start --> Run --> compmgmt.msc

[kré]

Originally posted by MisterBishi
I did something similar recently and had to use XP's 'Disk Management' to set the new drive as the boot device.

Start --> Run --> compmgmt.msc

that won't help me now, but thanks :p




http://www.crayonline.com/smilies/puppy_dog_eyes.gif

[MisterBishi]

Why not?

[sagit]

take 40gb and leave it out. make sure 80gb is set up same as 40, with regards pin settings (ie primary or secondary, master or slave). make sure bios is set the original way.

also boot from win98 bootdisk and run fdisk. ensure that option 2 is set for HDD (set bootable or whatever). you may want to do fdisk /mbr, but that may or may not fix it.

[kré]

Originally posted by MisterBishi
Why not?

because i havent reset my flux capacitor yet

[KrisEz]

you had better buy a new one
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=flux+capacitor&ht=1&sosortproperty=1&from=R10&BasicSearch=

[fearless13]

You should be able to use the winxp boot cd to do a rescue. The problem is that XP pays attention to the HD it is on. If you actually manage to get this to work I will be impressed as I have tried a couple of times to do similar things with little luck.

Possibly try to do a winxp install to the 80 then image across (means the mbr is written correctly due to the install).

[jambo]

I assume that you've tried safe mode (have to check ):p

[kyuss]

Boot off the Windows XP CD and then enter the Recovery Console, try punching in the cmd CHKDSK -r (locates bad sectors and recovers readable information), it's saved me a couple of times on system's that don't boot.
You can also create a new MBR in the recovery console, but i don't think that is your problem.

[MisterBishi]

Guys, he's already formatted the 'working' disk, so there's little option but a reinstall.

The problem is XP looks at the S/N of the disk it boots from because it's magic, maybe a product activation thing.

[Drakin]

Just stick in the xp cd.
Boot off it, install xp
Dont format or choose any format options.
that should just stick the operating system on the machine.

Now its probably going to have an activate me crisis now.

Just enter your xp code and voila.

If the code fails pm me

[kré]

Originally posted by Drakin
Now its probably going to have an activate me crisis now.


doubtful :o



if i do this, am i gonna lose the user profiles already installed?

[Drakin]

Ok the 80 gig has the data, the 40 has none, right?

Therefore the 80gb has the profiles setup in a standard windows xp setup.

If you install xp into the windows directory you may lose the profiles.

Options: Install over the top, only issues could be risk losing profiles, or it could all work seamlessly.

OR: Install xp to a different install directory (c:\winxp\)
This will keep all data on the disk, the problem then would be moving the profiles to the right install dir. Possible problems here may be that somethings may have already set their location to the previous install dir (ie in the reg its showing profile x as c:\windows\.....\...\x whereas its now running from c:\winxp\...\...\x) If this happens you either editing the registry, or reinstalling the program.

Why do you need the profiles?

[MisterBishi]

If you create users with the same usernames as the previous build, WinXP will not overwrite the old ones; the new profiles will be in a folder called:

C:\Documents and Settings\username.computername

Whereas the old profiles are in:

C:\Documents and Settings\username

All you need to do is log in with an admin account (not the same one you are copying the profile of) and copy the old profile over the new one.

You may get an error when copying certain subfolders (ie Temp Internet), but the important ones (Desktop, My Docs, Favourites) will give you no problems.

[kré]

Originally posted by Drakin

Why do you need the profiles?

mainly because the majority of the data that i'm trying to save is located in "my documents" for one of the profiles.

[DrDivad]

along semi similar lines,

after reinstallation of XP i managed to get blastered INSTANTLY!

i beat it back into a corner where it's quite benign, but it's stuck in C:/System Volume Information, if someone knows how to get in there your my hero

[MisterBishi]

Originally posted by DrDivad
along semi similar lines,

after reinstallation of XP i managed to get blastered INSTANTLY!

i beat it back into a corner where it's quite benign, but it's stuck in C:/System Volume Information, if someone knows how to get in there your my hero

I only just saw this, so you've probably fixed it, but you need to disable the system restore, then do a full virus scan - windows locks the files if System Restore is enabled.