Hard drive added to system, XP refuses to boot. Help!

[Hongfire]

I attempted to put an old hard drive in a new system.

I formatted the drive with the WinXP CD in DOS and deleted the partitioned space on it as I was told, but when I restarted the machiene, it attempted to install Windows XP to it. I did not want another WinXP installation, just 80 more gigs of space. I removed the hard drive, and now the computer refuses to boot, even with the original, untouched hard drive still inside. It takes almost 3-4 minutes for the computer to reach the "Windows XP Home Edition" loading screen, and it gives me the option to choose which WinXP installation I want to use, but after 1 second, it dissapears and the computer reboots itself.

I'm VERY scared. I'm praying to GOD that reformatting the original hard drive isint the only option, and it's something (hopefully simple) that I can fix myself. I really dont have the time and money to invest in someone recovering the data, espically with classes starting and college paid for.

What did I do wrong, and how can I solve the problem to set things to the way they were? Also, how can I install this little bugger of a hard drive without it screwing up my PC like this?

[stroyal]

Need more info
Did you change jumper settings on the harddrive, if so what are they?
Where were the drives plugged in? Master on the end of the primary cable?
What kind of hard drives?
Do they show up in BIOS?

[cmptrgydv]

It sounds like when it started to install XP it changed your boot.ini file,
Go into control panel, and click on system, go to advanced, startup and recovery, click on settings,
And then click settings, and see if it lists two XP installs

[Hongfire]

Need more info
Did you change jumper settings on the harddrive, if so what are they?
Where were the drives plugged in? Master on the end of the primary cable?
What kind of hard drives?
Do they show up in BIOS?

-I changed the jumper from master to slave by switching the place of that little peg on the back of the hard drive.

-The hard drives are on top of each other. I plugged the slave plug into the newly added hard drive.

-They are both ATA drives.

-Yes, they show up in the BIOS menu.

It sounds like when it started to install XP it changed your boot.ini file,
Go into control panel, and click on system, go to advanced, startup and recovery, click on settings,
And then click settings, and see if it lists two XP installs

I definitely want to try that, but as stated, the PC will not boot into Windows.

[RicheemxX]

unplug the new drive and see if you can boot to windows,

[cmptrgydv]

If it is showing two xp’s when you startup, and giving you an option to start both of them,
Then this is what you need to do,
Put your XP disk in and start PC,
When it starts to install it will give you an option to go to recovery console,
Go to the recovery console and when it gets to the C:/
Type in bootcfg /list
And see how many times it lists XP
If it lists 2
Then type in bootcfg /rebuild
But you might want to take the drive out that you do not want XP on,
If you leave it in, recovery console might just add that copy of XP back on to your boot.ini file,

[Hongfire]

Just did tht procedure, still having the same problem. WinXP loading screen comes up, then a screen says "Setup is trying to resume" or something, then it reboots.

Anything else I can do?

[cmptrgydv]

is it still giving 2 XP's at startup?

and what happend with the bootcfg thing?
what did it list

[Hongfire]

It's still giving 2 XP's at the 1-second long selection screen, along with another newely ceated one I was asked to name when I did the bootcfg?

The bootcfg thing only listed one WinXP at first.

I tried putting my original hard drive into another computer along with its hard drive so I could see if I could fix it from there in Windows, but even THAT computer refused t boot!

Did I mess something up, or is this still fixable? I hope so. I need everything back to normal by this evening.

[cmptrgydv]

are you sure it started installing xp on the new drive, and it did not erase the old one and start a new one,

[cmptrgydv]

your sure you formated the right drive?

[Hongfire]

Im positive. In the WinXP CD menu, it says the partition is as it shuld be, with 42GB's remaining, as I remember.

[cmptrgydv]

Ok I guess the easiest way to do this, is put your XP disk back in, and let it
Finnish installing, when it is done, it will give you 30 seconds to chose which
Xp to start, just push the down arrow to chose the bottem one, that should be the first one,
When you get into XP just open my computer, and right click on the new drive,
And click format, that will erase the new copy of XP, but it will still list it at start up,
Just push the down arrow and it will go to the first one,
Then you can go into the boot.ini file and manually take the other one out,
And you will be good to go,
You did not need to use the install disk to put new drive in,
You should have just put the drive in started XP and you could have partitioned and formatted
It from XP

[Hongfire]

Alright. Jeep in mind Ive been trying this stuff with the seperate 80GB hard drive not within the system.

So, essentially, once I let windows install on the new hard drive(it wasnt trying to install on the one I already had), I should just uninstall it and I'll be able to operate from my old hard drive intact?

[cmptrgydv]

yes, put is it giving you enough time when it starts, to push the down arrow,
so you can get into the real XP, or is it going to fast,

[Hongfire]

Going too fast

[cmptrgydv]

there is away to make it show that screen longer so you can boot the real one, but I don't remember what the command is to do it, so I would just put drive back in and let it finnish the install, then it sets the boot menu to 30 seconds, so you will have time,
you realy don't need to even let it finnish the install, the first time it reboots it should give you time to pick which one to start,

[Hongfire]

Ok, now I have enough time to choose.

When I choos the original one, I get dumped onto the "Setup is now resuming...." screen, and when I choose the new install, I get dumped to a fresh copy of WinXP, blank default desktop and all. Now, before I do anything else, and now that I can access windows from the new hard drive...

What do I do to fix/reair the non-booting ORIGINAL WindowsXP install I have on my main hard drive, and then effectively removing WindowsXP from this new hard drive so I may use it as intended?

[cmptrgydv]

startup the box, go into the new XP, and go to my computer,
open the drive that has the original XP and open it, and see if it is still there,

[Hongfire]

Yup, the original XP drive looks intact, all my stuff is thankfully still on it.