New hard drive not recognized as boot device

[biglau]

I have a Dell Vostro 220 running XP with all updates installed. My harddrive started going bad and clicking, so I ordered a new drive from WD and used the WD imaging tool to copy the drive. I then installed the new drive with the jumper set to master like the old one. The PC starts up and says no boot device found. If I hit F12 during the BIOS startup I can select the drive and it boots fine and runs well. I have used FDISK with Windows 98, but not XP so I am a little nervous to perform an MBR and wiping out the drive.

Thoughts?

 

[Mark56]

Reboot the PC with the windows xp disc in the drive. Press the R key to start the Recovery Console and select the windows installation that is on your drive then at the command prompt type fixboot c: and hit Enter. Replace the C: if the OS drive letter is different. Then remove the CD, type Exit and hit Enter to restart the PC.

Hopefully this will work. If not I would run a Repair install by booting from the XP disc, follow the prompts as if you were going to reinstall untill you reach a menu that has Repair Install on it. This will not wipe out any of your data or software but you should reinstall windows updates and check all your drivers.