Select proper boot device 2

[Torturednacho]

So here's the deal. About a 2 weeks ago I went out and purchased a WD Caviar Black
1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 32 MB Cache, 7200 RPM internal drive.

Over the course of the week, I installed win64 on it and started moving over all my data from my other hard drive

WD Caviar Green
1 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache

Everything has been working just fine. I can boot into either HD, I can do everything I need to do no problems.

Now, I was finally done moving all my data from the GREEN to the BLACK. So I was on the BLACK, burnt an iso of Linux Mint KDE 9. Went perfect, Pop the cd in the drive. It was running of the "live" for about 10minutes. So I go to install it and wanted it on the full GREEN, however on the install it noticed both HDD's. So without actually knowing which drive was the GREEN. I shut down the install, powered off the machine and removed the power and sata cable to the BLACK. Booted the machine back up and installed Mint KDE 9, Installed perfect, I was on it ran some updates and started getting the system setup. I shutdown the machine and plugged the sata cable back into the BLACK. Then started the boot process. Now at this time is when it should let me choose what HDD I want to boot into, but this isn't the case. Now it's just putting me right into the GREEN with KDE MINT 9 on it. Tried to reboot a couple more time. No go it will not see the BLACK (Winxp64). Jump into bios it sees everything just fine. Switch around the boot priority putting the BLACK first. I then get the following error

Reboot or select proper boot device or insert media to boot

.. So I log into the GREEN KDE MINT 9. It see's the drive and I can access all of the data on the drive. Power down the machine switch the sata cables and ports. Still same boot device error. Toss in my windows cd lastnight and let the chkdsk /r run ..It ran for around 4hrs.

Woke up this morning and seen it was complete. Did a FIXBOOT command and it gave me an error about no system boot found. Ran a FIXMBR and it created a new MBR with /HARDDRIVE0/ (Which I thought was always suppose to be 1 if the partition was the whole drive).

So now I come to post here. I'm completely lost and I'm out of options. I've done everything I can think of besides either trying to flash the bios (Which I doubt will do anything) Or try and find a MBR on the net for my configuration of winxp64.

Sorry for the long winded post. I just feel like this is something stupid and wanted to give all the details I could for a correct analysts of what is going on.

So.. Any Ideas?

Thanks!
James

 

[BadBigBen]

one idea and an explanation as to where you went wrong...

Explanation:

while you installed onto the BLK drive, the GREEN was still attached, thus all the BOOT information (BOOT.INI and other bootfiles) was still on the GRN drive. Once you installed Linux, all that BOOT INFO was destroyed, thus the BLK will no longer BOOT...

Idea:

1. unplug the GRN drive.
2. grab your XP CD and do a REPAIR INSTALL on the BLK drive.

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

a Inplace Upgrade Install (REPAIR INSTALL) will not harm DATA but will reset the OS to the SP lvl the install media was at. You will have to reapply all the HOTFIXES and UPDATES once again, but it will NOW be bootable...

3. once that is down, power down and hook the GRN drive back into the machine...

4. Boot into MINT, there you will need to edit the GRUB bootloader...
e.g.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=996

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[vacunita]

I agree with Ben. You killed the BLK's boot files when you installed Linux. And since you installed Linux without the BLK plugged in even if you hadn't killed off the boot files, it still would not have given you the boot choice because Linux did not know the BLK drive was bootable at the time of installation so would not have configured the Grub loader for it.

Ben's advice is what I would do.

----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[Torturednacho]

That does make alot of sense. However, Both drives were seperate. Neither 1 needed anything more then itself to boot. They weren't RAID so the GREEN boot.ini was its own. Then the BLACK boot.ini was it's own.

 

[Torturednacho]

Actually .. Wouldn't the FIXMBR have taken care of that?

 

[vacunita]

fixmbr recreates the master boot record of the drive to tell it its bootable, but it does not technically recreate the boot files such as boot.ini in the root of the drive.

You would need to have run bootcfg /rebuild to get it to build the boot files onto the BLACK drive.

If you installed Windows on the BLACK drive while the GREEN one was present its likely the boot files ended up on the GREEN one because it was already bootable, and master, and main drive to boot from.

Did you ever try to boot the BLACK one without the green one being connected before installing Linux?

However the second part remains true; if the BLK was not present when you installed Linux there no way for it to know it should make a boot manager that can boot onto the BLK as well.




----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[Torturednacho]

No I never tried to boot the BLACK w/o the GREEN. I've never run into an issue like this before. I've messed around with jacked up mbr's before but never something like this.

Instead of redoing the mbr for the black and trying to rebuild. Would it be easier and less time to just reinstall mint on the green with the BLACK plugged in?.

Since now I know the Black reads 1001J and the Green is 10EA-V?

 

[vacunita]

Would it be easier and less time to just reinstall mint on the green with the BLACK plugged in?.

Reinstall what? Linux Or Windows?
If Linux its likely not to work either, as the Black would still be missing the Windows boot files. If you install Windows on the Green the new installation may restore the missing files. But there's no guarantee.


----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Behind the Web, Tips and Tricks for Web Development.

http://behindtheweb.blogspot.com/

 

[BadBigBen]

The first thing you need to do is to get the BLK drive, aka Windows to boot on its own!!!

once Windows BOOTS, then go into the BIOS SETUP, and change the BOOT ORDER to boot from the GRN drive, now you can install MINT again, it should then find the Windows install and add it to the GRUB bootloader...

Neither 1 needed anything more then itself to boot.

obviously NOT... otherwise the BLK would have booted...

Windows Setup, looks for a previous installed Windows, it will then ask you if you want to FIX the one installed or install a new version...

you chose, most likely, the NEW install and pointed it to the BLK drive, windows will then install to that drive. then write to the BOOT.INI file on the GRN drive, and NOT install the BOOT files, other than perhaps the BOOT.INI file (if at all), e.g. NTLOADR(which gets called from the MBR boot code), onto the BLK... Thus once you remove the GRN, the BLK will no longer be able to boot, no matter how often you fix the MBR...

now, you could attempt to boot into the Recovery Console, then log onto the installed Windows, and issue the following commands, in the exact order:

1. FIXMBR (already done, so this one can be skipped)
2. FIXBOOT (this should rewrite NTLOADR)
3. BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Keep us posted...





Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"