Does anyone else have any other suggestions outside of repair? Couldn't I
just remove some of the ntldr's, boot.ini's etc and that will work?

If repair is of only option, won't it reset all settings and such?

Thanks much.



"DL" <address@invalid> wrote in message
news:%233BqAg2$GHA.3540@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Personnally I think I'd be inclined to start again, and disconnect all
> drives other than the one you want as C and a single cd, then repair the
> winxp installation.
> Having first read your mobo manual to ensure you have installed the sata
> drive to the correct sata connector and if neccessary configured the bios,
> and whether you need to F6 to install the sata driver from floppy during
> the
> proccess.
> Once running ok connect a single drive at a time, in the order you want
> I've no idea what you've done to get boot files on all your hd's, it may
> be
> neccessary to delete partitions on these
>
> "Mark G." <askmefirst@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:eAGraMz$GHA.1464@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> Please bare with me as I explain what I have done to this point so that
>> hopeful I can get a clear, concise answer that solves my issue
> immediately.
>> I appreciate your reading this and your patience and thoughtfulness in
>> answering it.
>>
>> So I reloaded windows on my computer completely whipping out the old
>> install. No problems there and all went as planned. My computer setup
>> consists of the following:
>>
>> SATA Raptor 72gig drive (primary SATA) - 2 partitions, 1 - 40gig (label
> C:)
>> and 1- 30gig (label D:)
>> SATA Maxtor 250gig drive (secondary SATA) (label F:)
>> IDE Maxtor 120gig drive (primary IDE) (label E:)
>> IDE Maxtor 40gig drive (secondary IDE) (label G:)
>> IDE ZIP 100 (label B:)
>> IDE CD/DVD-RW Drive (label H:)
>>
>> Anyhow, I partition the Raptor drive because I like to have my OS on the
>> 30gig partition along with things like my anti-virus software, winzip,
> etc..
>> while on the 40gig drive I generally put fast games like Half Life 2 or
>> Battlefiled 2.
>>
>> Anyhow, I had to mess around to get windows in the initial installation
>> of
>> XP Pro top recognize the Raptor SATA drive as being where I wanted drive
> C:
>> to be. I also had to allocate 8mb for some reason to another IDE drive
>> and
>> in doing so, created an I: drive which merely consist of a boot.ini file,
> an
>> ntldr file, and a ntdetect.com file. So it is relatively small, but for
> some
>> reason, I did not see any way around this. After getting all installed, I
>> did not care for the drive letters assigned to certain drives so I
> therefore
>> used Partition Magic 8 to re-label the drives to the drive letters of my
>> choice. While doing this, I was careful as to not mess with any drive
>> that
>> was a system or boot drive as I have had problems with that in the past.
>> Anyhow, all seemed fine, I patched everything with auto updates and
>> proceeded to move forward in setting things up. In that, I finally
>> removed
>> my Windows XP CD to load other CD's of things I needed. Anyhow, when
>> rebooting, I get the famed ntldr is missing error. Fine, I simple go into
>> recovery console to correct. In doing so, I just copied both the ntldr
>> and
>> the ntdetect.com files to the root of my C: drive. After rebooting again,
>> then I got some kind of boot.ini issue/error, but it still proceeded to
> boot
>> into windows just fine. And then finally, after that, I get the hal.dll
>> error. Through all of this, I just copied the appropriate files from the
>> installation CD to where they were need, the first 3 to the root of C:
>> and
>> the hal file to sys32 under windows. With that, I then looked to see what
> I
>> had where and fine that I had a boot.ini file, ntldr file, and a
>> ntdetect.com file on 3 drives for some reason. I know why they were on
>> the
>> I" drive to start with as you remember, windows wanted to create that
> space
>> upon initial installation. They were on my C: drive because I copied them
>> and I think they were on my E: drive (which was unplugged during initial
>> installation) due to something with an old xp install, probably my
> previous
>> install be fore reloading.
>>
>> Anyhow, now, I will continue to get a hal.dll file is missing or corrupt
>> error unless I have the xp pro cd in my drive. If I take the CD out, I
>> get
>> the error and no boot, but leaving it in, and windows loads just fine.
>>
>> So, what I am thinking is that I need to delete some files. I mean, with
> my
>> configuration, do I need to ntldr and other files on all of those drives?
>> What should I have where with this configuration given that I had to
>> setup
>> that I: drive and that I want to boot into my raptor drive which contains
> my
>> OS? Seems simple, but for the likes of me, not sure what to do next and
>> thought I would ask. Below, is what each boot.ini file says:
>>
>> C: drive:
>>
>> [boot loader]
>> timeout=1
>> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S
>> [operating systems]
>> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
>> Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
>>
>> E: drive:
>>
>> [boot loader]
>> timeout=30
>> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOW S
>> [operating systems]
>> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
>> Professional" /fastdetect
>>
>> I: drive:
>>
>> [boot loader]
>> timeout=1
>> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S
>> [operating systems]
>> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
>> Professional" /fastdetect
>>
>> Remember, my E: drive is just a data drive. I hope someone can help and
>> thank you again for reading all of this. I just wanted to be clear and
>> concise on the setup, what I did and all of that. Thanks much and the
>> help
>> is much appreciated.
>>
>>
>>
>
>