I have what appears to be a simple situation, and would love some help, as have been bashing my head against the wall for well over 30 hours. I have windows installed on C:/ (8gb SCSI drive), and I want to install it on to the D:/ (74GB SAS drive), and want to be able to remove the 8gb SCSI drive, and have all the boot files on the 74GB SAS drive (and it now the C:/ etc). The problem is that I have no access to a CD ROM drive or Floppy to do a windows repair to fix the ntldr and ntdetect files etc afterwars. I also fear that I only have one attempt, so wanted to ask a second opinion if anyone has the time to help me.
Scenario: Bought a Poweredge 4600 2nd hand for a great price as it had no CD or Floppy drives (I can see why now). Turned out there were no IDE or SATA ports on the motherboard. It had an unitialised 74GB HDD in it that I couldn't use. Couldn't boot from USB, so only weapon was an old P2 motherboard with a SCSI port and old SCSI 8gb HDD that was compatible between the two systems. I used the old P2 to install DOS 7.1 and the i386 folder onto this 8GB SCSI HDD, and installed windows successfully (I didn't think at this stage to just fdisk the D:/, hehe, but still would of ended up in the same situation). I then initialised the D:/ (74gb SAS drive) from Windows disk management on C:/ (8GB SCSI drive). The old P2 didn't have a port for the 74GB SAS drive, only the SCSI style with seperate power input, so this is why I couldn't just repeat the process on the
74GB SAS drive to put windows on the same way (even if I did an fdisk on D: before), because I can't get DOS onto the 74gb without a CD drive (used CD from P2 to put it on 8gb, but stuck with 74gb).
**So I am stuck trying to get windows onto the 74GB drive without leaving the boot files on the 8GB drive (DOS is on 8GB and has boot menu etc).
Other points- Pentium 2 died today aswell, so I am stuck with what I have at the moment to work with, which is an 8GB HDD (with windows 2003 (working), DOS 7.1, and the i386 folder on it),USB 1.1 access from windows, no CD/DVD or FDD, and no IDE or SATA ports. Has 1 PCI slot, but from what I have read, people have had trouble booting off drives attached to SATA/IDE cards (only some brands worked), plus don't really want a SATA card after job is done. We are dealing with Server 2003, but the boot files and way it works appears exactly like XP.
Things I have tried:
1) Booting into C:/DOS (8GB) and installing Windows onto D:/ (74GB HDD) from C:/i386/winnt (8GB HDD). Results – Windows works fine on 74GB HDD, but boot files remain on C:/ (8GB) and won't boot without this drive still attached.
2) Made a 5GB FAT 32 Partition so (DOS could see it) on 74GB HDD and put the i386 folder onto it (accessed from C:/Win2003), then booted into C:/DOS (8GB) and loaded D:/i386/winnt. Windows setup detected the installation on C:/, so presume the same thing would happen with boot files remaining on C:/ if I installed it onto D:/, especially it won't boot at all at this stage (2nd reboot into windows setup after copying files) if the C:/ detached at this stage.
3) Installing DOS onto an IDE HDD from CDD on another PC, copying these files to USB, onto Win2003 SCSI 74GB drive. Result – won't boot into DOS off 74GB HDD. The CD ISO for DOS 7.1 must do more than just copy all of those system files (yes I unchecked the box), it must write to the mbr or something.
4) Can't do a windows repair from 74GB HDD to fix boot files, as the HDD won't boot without the 8GB HDD with the boot files (inc DOS) on it. Even if I could get DOS onto this 74GB HDD I would have something to work with.
I also adjusted the boot drives properly in BIOS to correspond with the drive I am trying to boot off.
Two possible solutions, but don't know how to do it:
1) Install freshly from D:/... Need to get DOS installed properly onto the D:/ (74 GB HDD) so that I can boot of it without the c:/ (8GB) drive attached (it is no problem copying the i386 folder to D:/, I just don't know how to get DOS on there without installing off a bootable CD-ROM .iso file. I tried extracted the files etc, or copying them over through USB as I mentioned above).
2) Install Windows 2003 onto the D:/ (74GB HDD) from booting into C:/ (8GB HDD) and installing from there like I did above, and then somehow moving all of the boot files onto the D:/74GB HDD and somehow adjusting the MBR on it to boot properly. I did see a code somewhere, but lost the link, where there was a CMD command such as "extract mbr d: c:" or "edit bcd" or something.
Can anyone help me with either of these two possible solutions or think of another way to do this. Other posts around the internet seem to point to the obvious such as doing a windows repair from a CD drive etc. I have been beating my head against the wall for over a week trying to do this before asking for help, so any help would be muchly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Scenario: Bought a Poweredge 4600 2nd hand for a great price as it had no CD or Floppy drives (I can see why now). Turned out there were no IDE or SATA ports on the motherboard. It had an unitialised 74GB HDD in it that I couldn't use. Couldn't boot from USB, so only weapon was an old P2 motherboard with a SCSI port and old SCSI 8gb HDD that was compatible between the two systems. I used the old P2 to install DOS 7.1 and the i386 folder onto this 8GB SCSI HDD, and installed windows successfully (I didn't think at this stage to just fdisk the D:/, hehe, but still would of ended up in the same situation). I then initialised the D:/ (74gb SAS drive) from Windows disk management on C:/ (8GB SCSI drive). The old P2 didn't have a port for the 74GB SAS drive, only the SCSI style with seperate power input, so this is why I couldn't just repeat the process on the
74GB SAS drive to put windows on the same way (even if I did an fdisk on D: before), because I can't get DOS onto the 74gb without a CD drive (used CD from P2 to put it on 8gb, but stuck with 74gb).
**So I am stuck trying to get windows onto the 74GB drive without leaving the boot files on the 8GB drive (DOS is on 8GB and has boot menu etc).
Other points- Pentium 2 died today aswell, so I am stuck with what I have at the moment to work with, which is an 8GB HDD (with windows 2003 (working), DOS 7.1, and the i386 folder on it),USB 1.1 access from windows, no CD/DVD or FDD, and no IDE or SATA ports. Has 1 PCI slot, but from what I have read, people have had trouble booting off drives attached to SATA/IDE cards (only some brands worked), plus don't really want a SATA card after job is done. We are dealing with Server 2003, but the boot files and way it works appears exactly like XP.
Things I have tried:
1) Booting into C:/DOS (8GB) and installing Windows onto D:/ (74GB HDD) from C:/i386/winnt (8GB HDD). Results – Windows works fine on 74GB HDD, but boot files remain on C:/ (8GB) and won't boot without this drive still attached.
2) Made a 5GB FAT 32 Partition so (DOS could see it) on 74GB HDD and put the i386 folder onto it (accessed from C:/Win2003), then booted into C:/DOS (8GB) and loaded D:/i386/winnt. Windows setup detected the installation on C:/, so presume the same thing would happen with boot files remaining on C:/ if I installed it onto D:/, especially it won't boot at all at this stage (2nd reboot into windows setup after copying files) if the C:/ detached at this stage.
3) Installing DOS onto an IDE HDD from CDD on another PC, copying these files to USB, onto Win2003 SCSI 74GB drive. Result – won't boot into DOS off 74GB HDD. The CD ISO for DOS 7.1 must do more than just copy all of those system files (yes I unchecked the box), it must write to the mbr or something.
4) Can't do a windows repair from 74GB HDD to fix boot files, as the HDD won't boot without the 8GB HDD with the boot files (inc DOS) on it. Even if I could get DOS onto this 74GB HDD I would have something to work with.
I also adjusted the boot drives properly in BIOS to correspond with the drive I am trying to boot off.
Two possible solutions, but don't know how to do it:
1) Install freshly from D:/... Need to get DOS installed properly onto the D:/ (74 GB HDD) so that I can boot of it without the c:/ (8GB) drive attached (it is no problem copying the i386 folder to D:/, I just don't know how to get DOS on there without installing off a bootable CD-ROM .iso file. I tried extracted the files etc, or copying them over through USB as I mentioned above).
2) Install Windows 2003 onto the D:/ (74GB HDD) from booting into C:/ (8GB HDD) and installing from there like I did above, and then somehow moving all of the boot files onto the D:/74GB HDD and somehow adjusting the MBR on it to boot properly. I did see a code somewhere, but lost the link, where there was a CMD command such as "extract mbr d: c:" or "edit bcd" or something.
Can anyone help me with either of these two possible solutions or think of another way to do this. Other posts around the internet seem to point to the obvious such as doing a windows repair from a CD drive etc. I have been beating my head against the wall for over a week trying to do this before asking for help, so any help would be muchly appreciated. Thanks in advance