Booting up from wrong disk

[michaelh]

I have Windows XP and one disk. I added another 160G WD disk. The disk utility copied all the files from disk 0 (the original disk) to disk 1 and made it the new boot disk. How do I make disk 0 go back to being the bootable disk? When I unplug disk 0 , disk 1 boots up just fine. When I unplug disk 1 the computer will not boot up.

 

[raybay]

Run your main disk as a cold boot install in Repair Mode.

 

[michaelh]

Thanks raybay but...

Run your main disk as a cold boot install in Repair Mode.

Thanks raybay for the advice, but what is a cold boot and how do I install in repair mode. what is repair mode?

 

[raybay]

Put your Windows Disk in the Drive. Shut down. On reboot, press DEL to allow you to go change your boot order to the CD. Shut down. Boot to the CD and wait for windows to get to the "Run Repair"
This will not work with some Recovery discs, such as Dell, Sony, eMachines, HP, Compaq, but shoud work with and OEM Windows XP. The ideal fix is Windows XP PRofessional SP2 or SP3

 

[gbhall]

Depends what you mean by 'when I unplug disk 1'. Are you actually making sure Disk 1 becomes the bootable drive - you might need to alter the position of the drive on the connection cable, or change the boot order in the bios or similar. Many disk cloning packages will actually hide the drive you are copying from (set the partition as hidden actually). Much depends on how you cloned the drive, with what, and what answers did you give to the various prompts.

Sounds to me you simply failed to read the manual, in other words !

 

[michaelh]

problem with booting

Thanks for the advice again raybay. Will give it a try.

Put your Windows Disk in the Drive. Shut down. On reboot, press DEL to allow you to go change your boot order to the CD. Shut down. Boot to the CD and wait for windows to get to the "Run Repair"
This will not work with some Recovery discs, such as Dell, Sony, eMachines, HP, Compaq, but shoud work with and OEM Windows XP. The ideal fix is Windows XP PRofessional SP2 or SP3

 

[kimsland]

Microsoft's Windows XP Professional Repair Install step by step
http://www.windowsxpprofessional.windowsreinstall.com/installxpcdrepair/part3.htm

Microsoft's Windows XP Home Repair Install step by step
http://www.windowsxphome.windowsreinstall.com/installxpcdrepair/part3.htm

With one drive plugged in only. ie the faulty one

 

[michaelh]

Solved !! booting up from wrong disk

It seems the problem was operator error after all. When i said i unplugged the disk what i did was unplug the power connector. This was the wrong thing to do. When i actually unplugged the cable the original (disk 0) booted up fine. I am back up as originally configured. Thanks for all the advice from everyone.

 

[raybay]

Thanks for the update. We all make those mistakes. Most will not admit them.