tried to install a slave ide drive.no go now no windows boot? 1

[lordgalla]

Hello;I have a old pent.3 machine western digital 80 gig hard drive.Was running fine with windows xp and this one hard drive on the primary cable..tried to add a second hard drive,it was a 20 gig older ide drive,had the jumpers all ok,but no go.So I put the single 80 gig western digital back single drive on primary side no jumpers,and now windows won't startup.Starts to boot,see's drive in post,shows info then pops up,to either start windows normal,safe mode,safe mode with network,command prompt,No matter what I select it says missing or corrupt windows\system32\ntfs.sys,,,you can try to repair with original cd and press r to repair?.Man what did I do? I hope I didn't destroy the whole thing.Was runnning perfect,all up to date and all....Will this repair work? any idea's what happened?

 

[lordgalla]

sorry the directory it said was windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys

 

[BadBigBen]

About the HDD as slave, certain drives need jumpers to be set in order to use a Slave drive (Master with Slave Present)...

question: does the BIOS recognize the 20 gig at all, when it is plugged in alone?

the way it sounds, about the XP install, is that the BOOT.INI file, may have gotten corrupted or was changed when the SLAVE was inserted... in other words, the NTLOADR is looking for the boot files in the wrong partition or drive...

suggestion: if you are up to it, boot into the Recovery Console...

log onto the installed XP, then enter the following commands...

chkdsk /r
FixMbr
FixBoot

in that order...

here are the instructions:

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console for advanced users

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/en-us

and if that does not work, then performing an inplace install of XP should get you back on track...

How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[lordgalla]

Thankyou,ended up being the memory,switched it around in the slots,and it booted right up.Strange? must have been loose in the slots,they where clean.Anyway it's ok now.

 

[BadBigBen]

Glad to hear that all is well... and thanx for replying with the fix...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."