second hard drive...XP...missing NTLDR

[patdmoose]

I have an Emachine 400 MHZ, Celeron, 192 MEG, running XP upgraded from W98. The original 6.4 Seagate drive is maxed out. I added a Maxtor 40 Gig. I originally installed the drive with the MaxBlast software, only to find out later that it does not support XP. I reformatted the drive using XP disk management with the 40 as a slave to the 6.4. The 6.4 has the FAT32, and the 40 has the NTFS file system. I cannot get the 40 to load as the Master. I get the 'missing NTLDR' error, push Ctr-Alt-Del. I cannot find this file on my 6.4. The drive works fine as a Slave to the 6.4. I cannot find any info for XP and NTLDR on this site or the MS Customer Service site. I can set everything up to work with it as is, but prefer to get the 40 working as the only drive. I had planned to keep the 6.4 as a backup, not connected to any computer. I am fairly competent with changing around hardware, but admit to being lost when it comes to configering, etc. THANKS in advance

 

[dick471]

This is because your NTLDR is on the 6.4GB Seagate drive hidden in the "root directory". Your best bet is to save all your personal data, erase the new drive and install XP from scratch in an NTFS format as the only hard drive installed in the machine-Primary/Master. It will ask you for your legal copy of any windows operating system qualified for Upgrade to XP. It will ask you to put your windows 98SE CD in the CD-Rom so it can verify the key code is OK. Then XP setup will continue. And w98se's Fdisk will erase the existing NTFS partition you made on the new drive. Just select "non-dos partition" when asked what partition to delete. Don't use fdish to format with.