Resolved HDDs became corrupted after low CMOS battery

Tony, before I do this, does it matter if the drive is jumpered to CS, primary or slave?
Jumpers are ignored when using such an adapter. Don't have its usb cable connected when you boot your computer. Besides, you won't be able to boot an XP drive that came from another computer without errors.

 

That's interesting. Your response came up on my post. I'll follow your instructions now.

 

It works. I don't have Maya installed on my computer, so I can't view the files, but they are there. I can see the photos. I'll transfer everything over to my drive and then do the other drive, before addressing his actual computer. Thanks.

 

OK, I've copied both drives, and there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with them. I have these two drives plus the smaller drive I installed XP on. Let me know which one or ones to put in his computer and then what steps to take. I was never able to fully reinstall XP on his primary Seagate drive, so that one doesn't have a workable operating system.

 

By the way, his computer has a floppy drive and USB ports for my flash drive, along with his CDROM, if those would be helpful.

 

I continue to get "Non-System disk or disk error" when I attempt to access any drive or CDROM. The backup with the OS didn’t show up in the bios, so I was stuck with working with the primary without an OS. I finally got it to boot to the CDROM and attempted to install XP. Unfortunately, that resulted in the same BSOD that brought me here originally: ***STOP: 0X0000007B (0XF789E640, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000) Something doesn’t mesh anymore since the CMOS checksum error, even though I replaced the battery. I’m wondering if I need to run some tests on the mobo to see if that or the RAM has been affected somehow. What do I do now?

 

Tony, I don't think you would have ever guessed what my problem is, but I think I have finally found it. Strange as it may seem, the "\" key on his keyboard was jammed down. Things seem to work fine, once I took a knife to it and put it back where it is supposed to be. I have no idea how or when that might have happened, but I am able to start up the computer on his backup drive. Tomorrow, I'll hopefully reinstall XP on his primary drive and see if everything works well together. I'll keep you informed, but I'm hoping that was the only problem. The BSOD is a hardware code, and the keyboard is a piece of hardware. Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is it. Maybe you can explain to me how this could have happened.

 

I was too optimistic. Apparently, I did something while the key was jammed that prevents the boot from directing to the right place. I think it continues to direct it to the small drive I removed, and it won't allow me to change directions. I went into recovery console and did fixmbr and bootcfg /rebuild. It notices all the operating system partitions, yet I can't seem to get it to direct correctly to allow for the full installation of XP. It only works till the first restart, and then I get the BSOD, again. What now?

 

There is no ACHI for my AMD system. Sometimes the bios detects the hard drive and sometimes it doesn't, but I'm getting the message of "Non-System disk or disk error" again. When I do get into the recovery console and fixmbr, it just jumps to the next prompt and doesn't seem to do anything.

OK, I was able to start the install again, after I went into recovery console and designated a default boot (bootcfg /default). Unfortunately, when the computer restarted, after following your instructions, the old boot window appeared, and that doesn't allow me to choose before opening a Windows that always leads to the BSOD. What now?

 

OK, this time I deleted and reinstalled and formatted my first 2 partitions on the drive, and it appears to be loading XP properly. I'll report back after XP is fully installed.

 

It's perfect. No more problems and no loss of any files. Thanks for your help.

 

I was never crazy about his keyboard, but he liked it, as it matched his blue case. Thanks again.