Hi, I have some serious problems with a friends PC. I offered to do a fresh install of XP on his computer which was running ME. His CD drives wern't working nor was his floppy drive. Also his internet had recently stopped working and he constantly got error messages with ME. So after trying to install CD drivers I realised I'd have to install it another way. I tried that method where you boot from a Windows 98 floppy but got a "Disk I/O error, replace disk and press any key" error. Same happened with any other bootable miscrosft disks.

So then I took out his hard drive and put it in my own PC. I installed XP on it from there formatting the drive but seeing as it was a slave hard drive it didnt write an MBR to it. I found this out the hard way when I got a "NTLDL is missing" error. I tried recovering it with the XP recovery console back hooked up to my own computer but I got the same error when I triedd to boot on my friends. I tried MBRFix but couldnt run it because you "Cant run in DOS". I also tried that program called "Fix Ntldr" and on the "1st try this" selection under safe mode I got it to start running files and stuff from the disk but froze on Mup.dll.

I can access the hard drive when I boot from my own computer and hook it up as a slave but cant get it to boot on my friends computer but I dont know how to edit the MBR from his computer. Also I understand the whole boot.ini file but how do you edit the partition tables? How do you access them.

Could you please help me because I feel so guilty after screwing up my friends computer regardless of whether it was good or not. Thanks, Carl

Ok after 3 days of trying (and only about 30 minutes of posting that message) I've gotten windows to run (this site helped: forums.vnunet.com/message.jspa?messageID=654462). Anyway now it freezes when I startup, I tried safe mode but it freezes AFTER the text so I cant find out the problem. I can get it to boot on my other computer that always works but not my friends (the one I'm trying to fix). I think this means its a hardware problem right? Anyway windows DOES boot so its not an MBR problem anymore.

Can anyone help? Thanks again, Carl

When you installed Windows in your PC-- windows setup
analysed your hardware... so thats what it's looking for at boot.
The very first thing setup does is "checking hardware configuration"
it's not seeing what it saw at install--.
If you have the CD drives running --at this point you might be able to do a "repair install".
Or-- have you ever seen this?

Langa Letter: XP's Little-Known 'Rebuild' Command -- XP Management -- InformationWeek

I have never used it personally-- but Fred Langa is well respected.

Thanks! Its just I cant get the drives to work on the pc I want to install XP on so I cant run any setup disks. I might try transferring my working drives to the broken pc. Might as well try it

You are missing the point....

The very reason that wont work is that Windows verifies that the hardware that it is booting into is the very same hardware that it was installed ON --ALL THE HARDWARE. The motherboard/the RAM/The video adapter-- every single piece.
You cannot just swap drives back and forth between 2 PC's and expect things to work properly. Windows does not allow it.

Those CD drives were working previously ?
You may need to clear the CMOS / Reset the BIOS in order to get the drives recognized by the whole system-- then you can run the setup discs and repair the install from there --or (probably the best option) Wipe it clean and start over again.

A harddrive is part of a system .... Windows is installed on the system (all of it)-- not just the drive. The Windows FILES are on the drive-- but it takes all the hardware to make it work at all.

Ah I see! So I have to install windows on the computer I intend to use it on. So Im trying this new method now, Ive used a new floppy drive to boot to a 98 floppy, I "Boot computer with CD support" and it doesnt detect an FAT drive so simply installs the drivers for a cd drive I hooked up from another computer (which wasnt working either). Anyway I run smartdrv and then the XP setup, it asks where the installation files are and after that it says loads of text about the type of hard drive required and stuff then says it cant find a hard drive, press enter to exit.

I have the hard drive all hooked up but I reckon its just not mounted. How do you force DOS to install the drivers for it so XP can see it. really apreciate the help, thanks again, Carl

I fixed it! Yay! Thanks for your help it helped me figure out the right way to do it. Anyway for anyone who had the same problem. I ran a windows 98 boot disk (which suddenly started working) with smartdrive on it and used it to format my hard drive to FAT32. Then I used it to run smartdrv and boot the XP setup (d:\i386\winnt). It was straight forward from there. Thanks again for your help! Carl