Im looking for a new hard drive???

Coveredinbees!!!!

I got an SATA card for my pc so I could use SATA drives and installed my OS on to the new sata drive.

silkyuk9

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

Can you copy/paste your boot.ini file here. It's just a txt file but it will help see how your drives/OS are configured.


Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
-or-
Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, and then click OK.
On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
Under System Startup, click Edit.

When you click edit it will open your boot.ini. Paste contents into a reply on here.

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /FASTDETECT /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" =OPTIN /FASTDETECT

Toxteth_OGrady

OK, you have 3 physical disks each with their own version of Windows installed. When your PC boots normally it should be booting into XP Home Edition by default. Is that what you see?

silkyuk9

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

OK, you have 3 physical disks each with their own version of Windows installed. When your PC boots normally it should be booting into XP Home Edition by default. Is that what you see?

yes that is correct, XP home edition is what i put on the disc, this disc was in my old pc and i own the XP installation. The other 2 drives have XP on but i do not know anything about the installation as XP was on the discs already when i got the pc.

'we are moving forward'

Toxteth_OGrady

OK. Next go into disk management and post for Disk 0, Disk 1, and Disk 2 what their respective drive letters are, disk sizes and which one is labelled boot.

How to use Disk Management
To start Disk Management:
Log on as administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.
In the console tree, click Disk Management. The Disk Management window appears. Your disks and volumes appear in a graphical view and list view. To customize how you view your disks and volumes in the upper and lower panes of the window, point to Top or Bottom on the View menu, and then click the view that you want to use.

Should look like this:

Toxteth_OGrady

Both the 57 and 110 Gig disks you already have are easily large enough for Win 7.

If you don't have a back up already I would recommend you copy all the data you need to keep (from all 3 disks) onto one of those two drives first. You can then format the other and install win 7 on that.

However before I give you specific steps on how to do that I'm trying to establish exactly how you are set up at the moment, so you don't lose any data doing the upgrade to the wrong disk.

silkyuk9

ok, not sure how to print what i see so i have to write it all down

disk 0 Basic 14.31GB online, programs (C)14.31 GB NTFS Heathly (system)

disk 1 Basic 57.26GB online, (D) 57.26 GB NTFS Healthy

disk 2 Basic 110.17 online, (E) 110.17 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot)

Toxteth_OGrady

It looks like Disk 0, (C) is set as the first boot device in your bios and its boot loader is pointing to the XP Home on Disk 2 as the default OS to load. Which is why when you took disk 0 out it wouldn't boot at all.

The simplest way to do a Win 7 fresh install would be to copy any data you want to keep on Disk 1 (D) to Disk 2 (E). Then remove Disks 0 (C) and 2 (E) completely from the machine.

Next go into the BIOS and make Disk 1 (now the only disk) the first boot device.

Put in the Win 7 install disc and install it onto Disk 1. This will make it the default OS on that Disk and it will become C. It will be formatted during the installation process and all data previously on it (including the old XP Professional) will be erased.

Once you have finished setting up Windows 7, If you then want to you can refit the old E drive as a slave for storage. The XP Home OS on it will be redundant but you will be able to access all your files (documents, music, photos etc) by browsing to it from within Windows 7.

One thing that might be worth trying before you go any further though is to change the first boot device in the BIOS to Disk 2, remove Disks 1 and 0 and see if the machine will boot OK into XP Home Edition.