HD boots as slave, wont boot as master

[alliknowisnetworking]

I have a W2k Pro install on my HD. When set to single master, I get a "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter." I changed IDE cables, and switched to the secondary IDE connector. [no fix]

I stripped the computer down to the cpu, mem, and video card.
[no fix]

Now here's where it gets strange. I have another HD with W2k Pro. I set this drive as a master, and the previous drive as a slave. For some reason it boots off the slave drive, and not the master. I get right into Windows. And vice versa happens when I switch the drives master, slave config.

I dont get it. As a single master either drive gets the "Disk Boot Failure", but when theres a slave present it boots, but not from the master, it boots from the slave.

Any advice would be helpful b/c Im stumped

 

[ski]

Did you try jumping them as CS?

 

[Freestone]

Check the boot order in BIOS. It sounds as if it's set to boot off of hard drive 1 (HDD1) and not hard drive 0 (HDD0).

 

[dbData]

Check the boot.ini file located in the root of the first partition. It sounds like it may be pointing to the wrong drive/partition. It should look something like this;

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

This points to the 'ntldr' file located on the first drive/first partition to boot. (Also tells it where the OS is). Is suspect yours might say multi(0)disk(1)... ect.

Good Luck!

Rick

http://www.data-recovery-hub.com

 

[alliknowisnetworking]

You are absolutely right Freestone. I was messing around again last night and im looking at the boot order, and it was about 10 minutes b4 i realized, I said wait a minute where the hell is hdd0 I changed it then wala it booted up.