Simple Dual Boot Problems. Help Needed

[takumi]

I recently installed windows xp pro on a 250gb sata drive whilst having a 40gb ide with windows pro xp also. The installation works fine but if the 40gb ide is removed the 250gb will no longer boot. Is there anyway around this without having to format?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Try and do a Repair on the SATA XP. You'll need to run Fixboot and FixMBR

See the sticky How to repair... at the top of this forum.

 

[patio]

Do you have a boot option in your BIOS that can be toggled between SATA and IDE ? ?

If so what you need to do for this is re-install XP to the SATA drive with the 40G unplugged from the system...

Reason being in a multi-boot enviornment some system files are always written to the first active partition of IDE1. Since you removed the 40G it cannot see these and will not boot.

So after you finish this the boot sector will exist independently on both HDD's and you will just be using the BIOS to switch between the two.

patio.