Windows XP will not boot

[bullelk]

Please help me!!!

I built my primary computer with a WD 80Gb harddrive and have XP Home and many applications and files on it, it is running on IDE channel #2. My motherboard is a Soyo ULTRA KT333. I copied the entire contents of the drive over to a WD 80Gb drive that is connected to the RAID controller as Master and everything worked great, AS LONG AS WD drive is active.

I wanted to Format the WD drive and use it to store MP3 files etc.. but I can't boot when I tried to disconnect it. I changed the Boot drive to the RAID drive and the RAID is active in the BIOS. Everything boots fine when both drives are connected but when I unplug the WD drive form the IDE controller Windows will begin to Boot anf then hang, instead of giving me the WELCOME screen, I get one that shows the Windows XP logo and it will sit there forever.

I booted to the Windows XP CD and tried a repair (FIXBOOT and FIXMBR) but that didn't change anything.

Can someone help?

 

[bullelk]

Hello Anyone out there???????? I still need some help, PLEASE.

 

[gothic]

Windows XP (as with 98/95 and Me) plant some booting information into your root (drive 0) MBR, the Master Boot Record. This is the information used when booting!! When you copied all the files across and booted, with the original drive still in place, all was well (because it still had access to the MBR) but when you take that drive out, it will not boot, because the new MBR (on the new drive) is blank. Your only solution (I think) is to re-install windows OR take out the old drive then boot using your XP CD and choose 'Repair previous installation' from the options. When you get to the repair console type 'help' this will list all the commands, and the one you want is something like 'repair MBR'.
Somebody else may be able to explain it better than me.......I tend to waffle!!!!!!!

 

[bullelk]

Thanks for trying Gothic.

I did take out the original drive and booted to the Windows XP CP, chose Repair and then ran FIXBOOT and FIX MBR.

Still no change, the computer seems to go through the entire boot sequence but will not get to the Welcome screen. It stops at a similar light blue screewn with the Windows XP logo and that is it.

Anyone else have a suggestion?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

With both hard drives plugged in where do you end up? As dulal booting or what?

 

[bullelk]

With both drives plugged in, I can set the IDE drive as the boot or the RAID drive as the boot drive, they both have duplicate OS's, programs and files.

If I unplug the RAID drive and set the IDE drive (the orginal one) to boot then everything bbots up fine.

If I unplud the IDE Drive and boot to the RAID drive (the copy) then it hangs at the Windows Logo screen.