Member Avatar for SprayPaint

Before I get flamed, Yes I Know/Knew this was a bad idea, but I did it anyways, now i pay the price....

Here is whats going on,

Custom Built Computer (by me)
Drive 0 (Seagate Barracuda 7200 IDE 200GB)
Partitions 2 ("Old C" - 1 , "Old D" - 2)

Drive 1 (WD Caviar SE SATA 200GB)
Partitions 1 ("MyDisk" - 1)

OS
Windows 98SE on Drive 0 Partition 1 (Old C) - Not In Use Any More
Dual Boot To Windows XP Pro SP2 on Drive 1 Partition 1 (MyDisk)

**Problem**
When I Installed XP to "MyDisk" I still had need of 98 so i opted for the dual boot. Over time i required less and less of 98 and made it the "Default" OS but never removed the Dual Boot... Now drive 0 crashed which housed the "System" files for booting XP, and i can not boot XP or 98 for that matter.

running a disk diagnostics turned up that the drive is failing however it is still readable, it can not be used to boot but can be read once a system is booted.

**Question**
How do I migrate the system to boot off drive 1 partition 1 without having to do a reinstall of XP, mostly becuase i dont have my XP install disk anymore (i put some stuff in storage and forgot to pay the bill :( so i lost my disk) , keeping in mind that i can not boot the system into any OS right now.... i have another XP compuer that can have only IDE drives installed. NO Floppy Drives I also have USB Flash Drives or CD-Roms can be made...

Thank You In Advance For the Help
Cullen C.

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Member Avatar for bobbyraw

in your bios move the mydisk to the top of the boot order. and there should be no XP system files on Disk 0 as XP is installed on Disk 1 not unless youw ere crazy to change the windows patch during installation to be on disk 0. and lets us know if you can get a safe boot for Xp or a command prompt for windows 98 we can hlp you edit the boot file.

Member Avatar for SprayPaint

heh currently im not able to get on the system, only one monitar, and someone is useing it :( however as i recall that is how it was set up... it wanted to do a upgrade to my 98 on "Old C" or install to a new partition "MyDisk" and use "Old C" as the startup drive :(

while typing that i recalled i already removed the "Old C" drive from the computer and tried booting, it gave the could not find OS message

Please Tell me i can recover this :< i dont really want to spend another $100 to buy a new copy of XP :(

Member Avatar for SprayPaint

downloaded and made a BartPE CD, while booting it did a chkdsk and reported bad info in MBR and some bad sectors, let it do its thing, rebooted the system and windows booted fine.... Removed Dual Boot and made sure everything was set right...

so its all better now :)

Member Avatar for gerbil

Bobby, you can make some partition on disk 0 the active one, and then put the OS on another drive... it is found by the boot.ini entry on Disk 0 active partition.... handy sometimes.

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