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July 15th, 2005 18:00
SATA and IDE Drive Issues
I'm having a rather weird issue with my Dell XPS Gen 2.
The normal SATA drive that came with it is completely out of it. Corrupt to the core (virus, whatever, I don't know), and I couldn't do anything about it. I just went and bought a new IDE drive and installed Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on it.
Now, when I hook it up to my Dell, it doesn't recognize it from the BIOS, but boots from it anyway. When it boots however, MCE 2005 comes up, but the SATA drive is viewed as the Main C drive. This is a cause for a horribly slow respoding system, which takes up to 15 minutes to boot up, HOURS to install games, and even longer to copy-paste files.
When I remove the SATA drive phsyically, the BIOS doesn't recognize anything and doesn't boot. When I remove the IDE, the corrupt SATA attempts to boot, but fails. As I said before, with both drives connected, the BIOS recognizes the SATA drive, but says "Primary Master 1" (which is my IDE drive) is missing. Then it proceeds to the boot choices: "Windows XP" or "MCE 2005". When I choose MCE 2005, it goes to a black screen for about 5 minutes, then the Windows loading screen comes up, also for about 5 minutes. Then it boots. Windows XP is corrupt, like I said, so it goes to the blue screen after I choose it.
I noticed the IDE drive doesn't seem to have a "boot.ini" file of its own. The SATA has it with both O/S choices given. I know this is the key, but don't know what to do with it. This is a rough situation because one wrong move could knock both drives out, which would be bad. I need professional advice.
The normal SATA drive that came with it is completely out of it. Corrupt to the core (virus, whatever, I don't know), and I couldn't do anything about it. I just went and bought a new IDE drive and installed Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 on it.
Now, when I hook it up to my Dell, it doesn't recognize it from the BIOS, but boots from it anyway. When it boots however, MCE 2005 comes up, but the SATA drive is viewed as the Main C drive. This is a cause for a horribly slow respoding system, which takes up to 15 minutes to boot up, HOURS to install games, and even longer to copy-paste files.
When I remove the SATA drive phsyically, the BIOS doesn't recognize anything and doesn't boot. When I remove the IDE, the corrupt SATA attempts to boot, but fails. As I said before, with both drives connected, the BIOS recognizes the SATA drive, but says "Primary Master 1" (which is my IDE drive) is missing. Then it proceeds to the boot choices: "Windows XP" or "MCE 2005". When I choose MCE 2005, it goes to a black screen for about 5 minutes, then the Windows loading screen comes up, also for about 5 minutes. Then it boots. Windows XP is corrupt, like I said, so it goes to the blue screen after I choose it.
I noticed the IDE drive doesn't seem to have a "boot.ini" file of its own. The SATA has it with both O/S choices given. I know this is the key, but don't know what to do with it. This is a rough situation because one wrong move could knock both drives out, which would be bad. I need professional advice.
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shesagordie
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July 15th, 2005 18:00
ejn63
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July 15th, 2005 18:00
First things first:
Boot to the Dell diagnostic partition (F12) and test the SATA drive thoroughly. There is a decent chance it's dying, which is why you're seeing the symptoms you are.
If it passes, decide how you want the system arranged. If you simply want to copy data from the SATA drive, DISCONNECT IT. Repartition and reformat the IDE drive, and install XP on it. Note: the Dimension 8300, which is similar to your system, requires you to boot from SATA if there are both SATA and IDE drives in the system. That could be a problem.
Once you've installed XP the way you have, the only way to undo the mess is to completely reinstall it.