origionally, my hardrive was a slave, so i had no primery master.

i got my new hardrive and used the seagate utility disk to install it.

so:
computer on, puts utility cd in, utility ask me to take cd out( so i did), computer turns off.

now i put the new hardrive in.

so both hard drives are "cable select" and my new hardrive became the master.

the computer booted, and the the utility program started and asked if i wanted the new hardrive as additional storage.

i said yes, then it told me i nedd to hit the "erase" button cause there might be files on the hardrive, so i did.

the computer restarts, and now it gives ne the message: "error loading os"

heres what i have tried:
-returning my computer to it origional setting (my old hd as cable select slave)
-making my old hd the prime-master, and the new hd slave

needless to say, non of it works.

i made sure in bios it boots from "hdd-0", but that dont seem to be the problem.

how can i fix this, i dont want to loose all my data in my old hd, or do i want to have to reinstall all my programs and crap.

please help me!!

Its impossible AFAIK for a HDD controller to only have a slave attached - it would jumpered as slave and show up as slave but effectively its still a master because its running under its own built in controller.

Boot from the Windows XP CD-ROM and try recovery mode. See if you can get to a command prompt and look around and see if your data is still there - you possibly just don't have boot code written into the bootsector of the HDD its trying to boot from, so see if your data is still there.

If its not... well then you possibly erased the wrong HDD by mistake. You could then try a HDD data recovery tool, some of these are freely available on the net.

I never use cable select - I always explicitly select one as master and the other as slave, which is what I suggest you do.

ok see if this is right:

i should only have one hardrive in, my old one
set it as master
put windows xp in, and boot from cd
then select disk recovery...

assumeing thats right, what gonna happen when i select disk recovery?

it will ask you if you want to load a certain windows installation - if it finds it. It will then bring you to a command prompt, where you will be able to assertain what's on your disk. If you get this far, though, then your data will be intact. You can then try to generate a bootsector with fixboot and fixmbr command (just try both) to see if you can make that HDD bootable again.

firest of all let me say thanks, i really appreciate all the help.

the whole computer world is much less daunting with people thats willing to help.

ok so
i got the prompts so my data is there...

fixboot
FIXBOOT cannot find system drive, or the drive specified is not valid

fixmbr
caution
this computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record
FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed
this could cause all the partitions on the current hardrive to be inaccessible
if you are not having problems accessing the drive, donnot continue

those are the message i got, well i cant acces the drive so...
but it seems to be telling me that if i go on, i may loose all my data, and thats not cool...

what should i do?

So... you can actually select

C: Windows XP

...or something similar when recovery starts, you give your admin password and then you get to the prompt?

Can you do a dir and confirm what you expect to be there is?

If that is your system drive that's in there, and that's the message you get when you run fixmbr, then I think you do indeed have a messed up mbr.

You can probably just go ahead and run the fixmbr, it will probably fix your problem.

Another thing you can do is go into the recovery console, make a copy of your boot.ini file (its on c:\) then start to reinstall windows xp. when the first phase of the installation is over (the one with the blue text based screens) don't continue with the install: go back into the recovery console again and copy your old boot.ini over the new one that the install program just wrote. You'll then find that your boot environment is fixed, but your old system will come up (provided you chose not to format in the text based install stage, and that you did not continue with the install after that stage.)

If you are really worried about data loss, then do this. Take our your old HDD and put the new one in. Install Windows on that. Then attach your old drive. Copy the data you want to keep from the old disk to the new, but leave it on the old. You can then try some of the things I have suggested above (or all of them) with the old HDD back as master and on its own, if it gets wiped then not to worry you have a copy of everything already. If data loss is really worrying you (and it should!) then I would take care of this part first, then try some experiments as I have hinted at above. This method, if you later DID wipe your old HDD, would not recover the OS but it certainly would your other important data.

i said no to fix mbr to bring me back to the prompt: c:\>

but when i type in "dir" it says error while trying to accumulate

so maybe i dont have my data after all...

that sounds bad. if you still want that data now, I think you will have to find some kind of hard drive partition recovery tool.

this has been discussed here many times, so try a search on it. but some nice person who knows the name of a good one may well post, you never know....

You will probably need to use this utility to copy the contents of the damaged drive onto the new one...

that's your only hope now. it will probably not do to recover your OS install, but you will certainly be able to get your data back - if you have luck on your side.

well i went ahead and installed windows on my new hd...
so leats i hav a workign computer.

if only i didnt try to install a new hd, it wasnt like my old one was that full...

jeez i hate myself.
so after all that bull, i pluged my old hd in...and windows wants me to format it b4 i can use it so...nice person, help me get my data!

OK, you need to run some kind of hard drive partition recovery tool.

Here's some info:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9291

http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13926

http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthre...e=15&highlight=partition recover&pagenumber=2

http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12564&highlight=R-Studio

Maybe someone else will have a link to a good free one....

certainly, DON'T try to write anything to that old HDD or you WILL certainly loose everything forever...

haha, i think maybe you think too highly of me...

im actully quite computer dumb (seeing how i screw myself over...) red those links, most are over my head

basically, you want to download and read the instructions for one of the partition recovery tools that are mentioned in the links. there are some commercial ones, and also some free ones as well. None of this constitutes anything more complex than stuff you have already done and written about in this thread.

Basically, you are talking about running a tool, either in DOS or in Windows, that will see the old files on your disk as they were before the accident. You will either be able to copy these to another location, or repair the partition table to recover the old partition.

holy s*** i got it back!!!@

i love you man, i had so much music and videos and s***.

omg i love you, thanks for everything.

so now i have 2 hds both with "system" and "program files" so im not sure which is which...as in which is the comp booting form and which i can use as storage...

but thats a after thought, i love you, i got my friggin files back!!
wOOO!!!

- Watch your language on these forums
Didou

Please can you tell us what happened and how you fixed your problem?

ok so i used that last link, got that software(testdisk-5.3), and had in do it wonderful magic to my old hd.

so i saw my files, and the prog told me that my boot sector is bad, and replaced it with a back up, so it fixed my boot sector.

so then restart comp, windows runs off my new hd, while everything in my old hd is there and works, as in the programs in my old hd even works (such as winamp, mirc, etc)

so now i got a total of 200gigs, and brand new know-how about hardrives. not too bad, even though i was in cold sweat for the better of 5hours thinking that i lost all 13gigs of mp3s...

Oh that's really good, so it was a bad boot sector. I am glad you got your data back, and looks like this was a good learning experience for you. In the future, maybe you should make a backup of important data just in case.

Hey

Just wanted to let you know I also bought a 200gb Seagate drive yesterday and used their software to install the drive. My situation is exactly the same as yours except I wanted to use the new drive as slave and retain my old drive as the master with the OS on it. Ran their program and got the "error loading OS" thing and now can't access jack.

Was going to just install the new OS on the new drive instead until I saw this thread. Hopefully that techdisk program will work.