New Hard Drive - XP won't Boot

Hi,

My friend bought a new Hard drive - installed as secondary master and used a Maxtor program to copy all the data from the original Hard drive to the new one - including XP. He choose to use this as a boot disk. Then he removes the original hard drive (he is giving it to his dad) and swaps the new one to the Primary master, but XP won't boot.
Is it because the Drive letters are wrong? Should he leave the drive as secondary master?
Any help would be gratefully received.

 

Was it supposed to be a clone of the old drive? If so, the partitions should have been hidden from one another during the cloning operation and then both could have the same drive letter. Certainly, if the drive letter has changed, he has problems.

Boot from the XP CD and get into the Recovery Console (the first time they ask you to press "R "). From there, explore a little. For example, if the old drive was C:, type: "C:" to see if you have access to it and then: "dir" to get a directory. See if the drive is labeled correctly as C: and whether you can see the XP files on it, for starters.

It wouldn't hurt, while you are there, to run a chkdsk, too. In the RC, type: "help" for a list of all commands. Type the command followed by /? for specifics on that command. For example, type: "chkdsk /?" and you will see that to check that C: drive, the command is:
chkdsk C: /p
(a little different than the command prompt).

What exactly happens when you attempt the boot?

PS. He did remember the jumper, right? If that is the only drive, try it jumped as "Master ". Then try it with no jumper.

 

Make partition active.

silverwork,

You can have only one active partition, so there is probably no active partition on the new drive. Fdisk normally should make the boot partition active if the old disk is not in the computer.

 

Try diskpart(.exe)?

silverwork,

Check out the diskpart command that you can use in Recovery Console:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prmb_tol_gkdx.asp

I haven't used it, but it seems to be a replacement for DOS fdisk. Maybe someone has used it and will help us.

 

Diskpart only creates or deletes partitions. Fdisk can make a non-DOS (NTFS) partition active even if it can't read the contents of the partition or identify the file system.

Diskpart.exe usage:

"DiskpartCreates and deletes partitions on a hard drive. The diskpart command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

diskpart [/add | /delete] [device_name | drive_name | partition_name] [size]

Parameters

none

Used without parameters, the diskpart command starts the Windows character-mode version of diskpart.

/add

Creates a new partition.

/delete

Deletes an existing partition.

device_name

The device on which you want to create or delete a partition. The name can be obtained from the output of the map command. An example of a device name is:

\Device\HardDisk0

drive_name

The partition you want to delete, by drive letter. Used only with /delete. An example of a drive name is:

D:

partition_name

The partition you want to delete, by partition name. Can be used in place of the drive_name. Used only with /delete. An example of a partition name is:

\Device\HardDisk0\Partition1

size

The size, in megabytes (MB), of the partition you want to create. Used only with /add.

Examples

The following examples delete a partition:

diskpart /delete \Device\HardDisk0\Partition3

diskpart /delete F:

The following example adds a 20 MB partition to your hard drive:

diskpart /add \Device\HardDisk0 20 "

 

marks the partition with focus as active

Abraxas, and silverwork,

"Diskpart only creates or deletes partitions "

Please see:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/diskpart.mspx

"DiskPart commands

active
On basic disks, marks the partition with focus as active "

P.S. You are correct re: recov. console. Apparently at the command line (only in xP?) all the commands are available; that's not much help in this situation. Good thing fdisk will work here.

 

You're absolutely right. I guess their own directions minimized the usefulness of the command.

I just tried it at a command prompt and it is recognized as a valid command. One of the few commands that the command prompt and the Recovery Console have in common.

In fact, diskpart /s
will run a "diskpart script" to perform multiple tasks.