hard drive problem

[Taylor1]

ok, so i have this old Pentium III, Dell XPS B Series desktop.(its my aunt and uncles old comp) It has one HDD with Windows 98. I put in another HD, and while it was plugged in as a slave, i installed XP on it. The installation was fine, i can get into windows as long as the old hard drive is in master. I tried putting the newer HD in alone, and it wouldnt boot. I tried all the different jumper settings. it wouldnt boot. So i hooked back up the older HD, and i booted into the windows xp. Im trying obviously boot into the newer HD without the older one hooked up. This comp is so old that i cant get into a boot options thing by pressing f2, f8, f12, delete, or any other keys. What i really need is to know what commands in command prompt i can use to do what i need to do.

 

[Celegorm]

This has something to do with the boot sector of the hard drive. in the repair partion of windows set up (the part of setup you choose by pressing "r" are the first screen, looks almost like command promp) typing "fixmbr" and "fixboot" should correct this and make it boot properly when the drive with xp is in by itself.

 

[Taylor1]

ok, it says that the old HD has stuff that has boot settings on it, and the newer one doesnt have these settings on it. How can i move these settings on the newer one?

 

[Taylor1]

any ideas?

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Well, you can put the drive with XP in, boot to your XP CD, and use the Windows XP Recovery Console to write a new MBR. You'll use the FIXMBR command as described on the linked page.

 

[Raffaz]

you could also try using the bootcfg /rebuild command