Switching hard drives

[fabrik]

I just installed a new hard drive into my computer - i put it on the secondary IDE cable as master with a cdrom as slave, while the first IDE cable has the old hard drive as master and another cdrom as slave. now that i have installed win2k and all my files to the new drive, i want to take the old one out (it's bad luck, trust me) and make the new drive the primary drive. however, when i take out the old drive and try to boot up, i get a "press a key to reboot" message every time. i tried moving the new drive to the spot left vacant by the previous drive, no luck, also i left the new drive where it was and still no luck. how do i make this drive my computer's primary drive and either remove the other drive completely or move it to where the new drive is now? (master on secondary IDE cable) any help much appreciated...

 

[Mulga]

It should be the master on the primary IDE cable, also the partition on which you have installed the OS must be a primary partition and made active. All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

 

[warmunger]

OK make sure that your new hard drive is set as primary. This here is just a suggestion but why don't you put the 2 cdroms on the same controller.Then make sure youre BIOS detects the drive as the primary drive.

 

[wolluf]

How did you install 2k on new drive? (ie, you don't mention what is/was on old drive, and was that drive in machine when you ran the install?) What's probably happened is that all the boot files for your new 2k are on your old drive (which would explain why new won't boot on its own). If this is so, this is how you fix it:-

1. Copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from root of C: drive on old disk to root of drive on new disk (hidden, system files)
2. Make sure boot.ini looks something like this (assuming your new drive will be primary master):
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
(yours may have rdisk(1) currently - change it if so).
3. Boot PC using 2k install CD (and just new drive connected) and choose repair and recovery console (you'll need administrator password). Once at command prompt, type Fixboot, then type Exit to reboot (type help for list of commands). System should now boot into 2k.

 

[fabrik]

thanks for the replies. wolluf, the only hidden system file i found on the C: root was BOOT (DOS file) - ntldr and ntdetect.com are on both drives, but not in folders created from a Windows Service Pack. i couldn't find a boot.ini file anywhere on either drive. i opened up the BOOT file with Notepad, and all it said is C:\=MS-DOS. any further suggestions?