"Repair installation" question

Theophylact · March 19th, 2007, 06:55 PM

Well, I did the right thing and ran a clean install of XP Home with SP2 slipstreamed on a brand-new Seagate Barracuda 250, and by now I've pretty much got everything back to where I want it. But here's a question:

Now, when I try to run the old drive as a slave so I can clean it up, I get a message at bootup that XP couldn't run because of a corrupted file, and it asks if I want to do a repair installation. I assume that it's looking at the slave (D) drive when it says that, and that it's because it sees bad sectors or something. But I don't want to try a repair with my good drive in and running for fear it'll try "repairing" that one instead.

Should I temporarily remove my good drive, run SpinRite on the bad one, and then reformat it? Or should I try a repair with only the bad one hooked up? Or what?

Cmptr-Gy-Dv · March 19th, 2007, 08:04 PM

if you leave the slave in, xp should show them both, and ask which one
you want to fix, but on the risk that it will then make them dual boot,
I would just take the new one out and wipe it,

did you install the new copy of xp with the new drive in by it self,
or was the old drive also in, I ask because it might have used the old boot.ini
that may be why your getting that error,

Theophylact · March 19th, 2007, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cmptr-Gy-Dv

did you install the new copy of xp with the new drive in by it self,
or was the old drive also in, I ask because it might have used the old boot.ini
that may be why your getting that error,

The new drive only. And it's currently recognized as C, with the next (removable flash) drive as E.

Cmptr-Gy-Dv · March 19th, 2007, 09:23 PM

then I would take the new one out,
and wipe the old

but when you have them both in, is the bios set to boot from the new one first

Theophylact · March 20th, 2007, 09:49 AM

I'll check when I get home, but normally my bios would be set to boot from CDROM first, then HDD (0). Which would be with the new Barracuda on EIDE 1 as master.

Rootstonian · March 20th, 2007, 10:43 AM

That doesn't sound like you have the old drive configured as SLAVE. To the best of my knowledge, booting from the new drive would not "scan" the SLAVE and see it needs repaired; it should just show up as another drive.

Make sure you have it configured as MASTER and SLAVE and that the SLAVE is on the secondary IDE connector on the ribbon cable.

Theophylact · March 20th, 2007, 11:42 AM

I have them both configured as "cable select" with the new one in the terminal position.

Rootstonian · March 20th, 2007, 11:45 AM

Boy, I never had any luck with that cable select LOL.

I still would try jumpering MASTER and SLAVE. The way you describe it, it sounds like it's trying to boot from the old drive.

Barring that now working, how about getting an external drive case and hooking it up USB? They're not terribly expensive...$20 - $40.

I don't know what you mean by "terminal positon" either. Do the MASTER/SLAVE jumpers. Make sure the MASTER is plugged into the END of the IDE cable and the SLAVE is in the "middle" connecter. It'll work...trust me

And it's been a while, but on newer IDE cables, I think the blue end goes to the mobo and the black to the drive. For some reason, this matters...

TrendyMartini · March 20th, 2007, 12:16 PM

I agree with Root, Cable Select never seems to work as smoothly.
I would move the jumpers and place them correctly.

I really recommend trying Koppix Live CD... Using QTParted to format, partion and manage drives works better than anything else I've used. (K Menu>System>QTParted) It's pretty self explanatory but may take a few minutes if you're not used to Linux.

Theophylact · March 20th, 2007, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rootstonian

I don't know what you mean by "terminal positon" either. Do the MASTER/SLAVE jumpers. Make sure the MASTER is plugged into the END of the IDE cable and the SLAVE is in the "middle" connecter. It'll work...trust me

And it's been a while, but on newer IDE cables, I think the blue end goes to the mobo and the black to the drive. For some reason, this matters...

The new drive is plugged in at the end of the IDE cable, and the old buggerated one in the middle. With cable select (and that's the default configuration for the jumpers) that should make the new drive master.