how do I make my XP drive bootable?

[ehdee see]

Hi,

I'm having quite a typical XP problem although I need an alternative
solution.

Could some one please help me out? I bought a new Hard drive with the
intention of making it my Primary C: boot drive. Unfortunately, my
CDROM does not support booting so I had to make my new HDD a slave and
copy the setup files across manually. Then XP to my new drive.

The problem is, is that my old Windows ME still has precedence over
which OS I boot to, when in fact I want my XP drive to be entirely
autonomous. (My plan is to remove my ME drive altogether and replace
it with another drive containing loads of documents).

The general consensus seems to involve booting to the XP cd again and
using the repair facility to make the XP drive bootable.

so:
C: ---> Windows ME 2.1GB HDD
D: ---> Windows XP 80Gb HDD

I want the current D: to be my new C:

cheers,

ehdee

[Gazwad]

Download the M$ start-up floppy making program as appropriate for your
version of XP.

Home
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33290
PRO
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33291

Rip your PC apart and slap it back together with your 80GB drive as master
on the primary ide channel.
Put your cd drive on you secondary ide channel as master.

Also keep any other cards out of the way until you have installed XP and put
them back one by one afterwards.

Boot from the first of the floppies you made from the above downloads. (6
for pro)

Partition your hard drive as you see fit during the XP install.

If you plan to use your 2.1 gb drive simply for documents then it might also
be prudent to keep an image of that drive on your larger disk in case it
fails. In any case you would want to attach it as secondary slave.

--

Gazwad

Freelance scientist and people tester.

[ehdee see]

"Gazwad" <Dont Be So Far King Wee Tar Did> wrote in message news:<3c86...@news1.homechoice.co.uk>...

Hi,

Cheers for ur reply. Unfortunately I'm getting an error code 7 from
Boot Disk #2. Can you help me out further please?

ehdee

[Gazwad]

Due to the very nature of floppies its always wise to make more than one
copy.

Is this problem occurring when you are making the boot disks or using them?

If the program is corrupt then some xp cds have the program on them to make
the floppies as well.

--

Gazwad

Freelance scientist and people tester.

"ehdee see" <eh...@gay.com> wrote in message
news:305ea933.02030...@posting.google.com...

[Joseph Jester]

Here's what I did to make my XP drive the boot drive:
I took my slave HDD (15GB) and jumpered it as master. I took my primary
drive, and disconnected it during my installation of XP (clean install on
the aforementioned drive.) I then jumpered my (formerly)master drive as
slave, and plugged it in the 15GB drive's place. Even though I now had 2
bootable MBR's, XP booted my system without a hassle, albeit my former
primary drive (98SE) wasn't recognized as existing during installation. If
your BIOS supports it, configure it to tell it which drive it should look on
for a boot sector if you've got XP installed. And be sure to have a boot
disk lying around in case things go awry.
Speaking of boot disks, the original poster said their computer doesn't
support bootable cd's. If you can get a hold of one, a win98 boot disk will
work just fine. Don't worry about the disk not containing a boot sector
similar to XP. If you don't have XP installed, this really doesn't matter. I
have a friend that seems to think using a win98 disk won't work for other
OS's, or at least he did until I told him I installed win95 on a non-cd
bootable system with a win98 boot disk without problems (except for the fact
that the mainboard bios on the installed computer didn't support drives
larger than 512MB, but that's another tale). :P Hope this helps.
Joe