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OK guys, here's an interesting problem... I bought a 2nd HD and wanted to write a new version of XP on it. My old HD had a bootable, working version of XP so I placed both HD's in my CPU and started the installation of XP on the new HD from the windows GUI of the old HD. Everything worked fine except that XP edited the MBR of the original HD to boot this new XP install on my new HD. Now, when I turn the CPU on, the bios looks at my original HD's MBR for available OSs to run. I have 2 choices now: 1. The original XP install on my old HD. 2. The new XP install on my new HD. Here's what I need:

1. I need to make sure that this is actually what is happening. The only troubleshooting that I've done so far is to unplug the old HD and edit the bios to try and boot to the new HD. My new HD is an SATA drive, while my old HD is an EIDE. I'm not sure how to enable the bios to boot to an SATA drive (is it SCSI or does it have an identifier (e.g. HDD0, HDD1, etc). Anyways, I tried various combinations without being able to boot, so I'm pretty sure that this is what's happening.

2. How can I edit the MBR on my new HD to boot it's newly installed version of XP? Can I copy the MBR from my original drive to this drive somehow (however, the MBR from the original drive has two versions of XP available to boot, and I'll only need the newer version when everything's finished).

3. My final product should be a standalone SATA drive booting it's version of XP without a prompt (I should be able to remove the other drive).

Constraints:

1. I do not want to rewrite Windows XP on my SATA drive.

Please help if you have any suggestions...

Thanks,
-Clayton

Ha!

OK... So here's how to fix this problem...

1. Run the system recovery console and repair the MBR (The MBR is currently blank on this drive, since it's not assigned to boot any OSs).

2. Run Windows XP using both drives (boots off the old HD still).

3. Copy all C:/ system files (especially ntldr and boot.ini) to the root directory of new drive.

4. Edit boot.ini so that the correct drive and partition are booting (since I now have my old HD out, my new HD has now changed locations to HDD-0 Partition 1 etc.)

5. Note that restoring the ntldlr using the system control console does not work b/c the drive had no ntdlr to begin with. Copying the file worked perfectly for me.

I would be interested to know if I made any serious mistakes (left any crucial files unedited) by using this method. However, I'm writing you from my PC running the new standalone SATA drive without any problems whatsoever. Everything's peachy as far as I can tell.

Staff, please let me know if you have any comments on my methods.

Thanks,

-Clayton