Problems booting from IDE HDD when SATA HDD installed

---

@ecotrea wrote:

I have a Dimension 4600 that I just installed a Seagate 160G SATA HDD on.  My Windows XP is on the original 40G IDE HDD that came with the computer.  When I start the computer, I get an error message saying "NTLDR is missing.  Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart."  It seems the comp is trying to boot from the SATA HDD which has no OS on it.   I can go to "Boot Options" (F12) and boot from the IDE HDD but this is annoying.  Is it possible to set up, perhaps in the BIOS, the boot sequence to go to the IDE HDD first?  Thanks for all help in advance!

Using the Advanced Forum Search on the bottom of this page, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

No, it's not.  If you want to use SATA, you must boot from it.

rickmktg,

>>No, it's not. If you want to use SATA, you must boot from it.<<

You'll have to tell my 8300 that. I boot from my original Seagate ST340014A C: drive (XPPro SP2) and recently added a Seagate ST3160827AS SATA drive. Works for me. The DiscWizard tool that comes with the drive seems to do the job (though not quite as seamlessly as expected).

jb

Message Edited by exmixer on 01-20-2006 12:30 PM

ecotrea,

Try this...Shut down any open apps, then start DiscWizard. Select 'Setup new drive' next->'Drive is in system' next-> select the SATA drive from the tree next->'Custom->'As addtional storage'. You may also want to change the drive letter first to something like Z, though I think that was a specific problem I had when re-installing XPPro (on my original C: drive) *after* the SATA drive was installed. Btw, XPPro *was* already installed on my original C: drive when I put the SATA in, it was just getting way too sluggish even after all spyware/av/reg cleaning I could do.

Hth,

jb

You can force XP to boot from whatever drive and partition you wish.  Simply do the following:

Copy the system files NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM to the first SATA drive.  Modify the boot.ini file on your primary IDE drive so it looks something like this (your mileage may vary depending on your system config):

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Primary IDE 0" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP SATA 0" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Then copy it over to the first SATA drive as well.