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Fixing booting problems when moving 1 harddrive to another system


dread

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Took a harddrive out of 1 computer that had XP Pro in it and stuck it in another computer. I took out the original harddrive and just left it out. The original has XP Home. I moved the jumpers to Master and it worked. Then I decided I was going to add the original back to the computer. I moved the jumper on the XP Pro harddrive to slave and just added the XP Home harddrive. The XP Home booted up fine, but the XP Pro did not. I edited the boot.ini file so I could choose which OS I wanted. I had to eventually repair XP Pro. XP Pro would start to boot then just crash and flash a blue screen. Why just changing the XP Pro harddrive to slave make it unbootable? What files could have been changed edited etc... to avoid doing a repair on XP Pro?

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The fact that it worked the first time is surprising. Either that or both computers have the same Mass Storage Controller. Boot up the XP Pro drive using F8 and select the Disable Automatic Restart on System Failure. Then you should be able to see your STOP error. If its an 0x7b a repair install may be the only option.

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Took a harddrive out of 1 computer that had XP Pro in it and stuck it in another computer. I took out the original harddrive and just left it out. The original has XP Home. I moved the jumpers to Master and it worked. Then I decided I was going to add the original back to the computer. I moved the jumper on the XP Pro harddrive to slave and just added the XP Home harddrive. The XP Home booted up fine, but the XP Pro did not. I edited the boot.ini file so I could choose which OS I wanted. I had to eventually repair XP Pro. XP Pro would start to boot then just crash and flash a blue screen. Why just changing the XP Pro harddrive to slave make it unbootable? What files could have been changed edited etc... to avoid doing a repair on XP Pro?

Probably could have "fixed" it by booting into Bart's (UBCD4Win) or WinPE LiveCD and remote editing the Registry. There are many, many entries similiar to this: \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Boot\BCD (from Win7) that would need to be changed to this: \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Boot\BCD or vise versa. There are other similar entries that would need to be changed from C:\Documemts and Settings\ to say D:\Documents and Settings\ or vice versa and so on.

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Why just changing the XP Pro harddrive to slave make it unbootable?
You should make that partition active, edit boot.ini file and set properly booting device, and then try boot Windows.
Uhhh, no... Info in each individual registry precludes that.

You could set one primary, one slave (both set active).

-BIOS both AUTO + Boot HDD1 : primary will boot (as C) and see secondary (as D).

-BIOS both AUTO + Boot HDD2 : secondary will boot (as C) and see primary (as D).

Only other option is to copy the Primary's BOOT.INI entry and modify to point to Secondary and reinstall "over-the-top" to secondary (no data loss).

There's also a topic here that may help immensely as another alternative.

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You could set one primary, one slave (both set active).

-BIOS both AUTO + Boot HDD1 : primary will boot (as C) and see secondary (as D).

-BIOS both AUTO + Boot HDD2 : secondary will boot (as C) and see primary (as D).

Well, I guess they made Disk Signature in the MBR and in the Registry EXACTLY to avoid that. :whistle:

jaclaz

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:blushing: My bad...

1 - Boot to Primary.

2 - Edit BOOT.INI in secondary to copy the line -

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows (whatever)"

3 - Edit BOOT.INI in Primary; paste it below the line that "looks the same"

4 - Change the pasted line value "rdisk(0)" to "rdisk(1)" (the HDD "pointer")

5 - Save it and reboot.

Noticed the OP had "swapped drives" and both worked. Lucky, IMO, that it worked (basic MoBo must have been the same) in the first place. Unfortunately, the OP had already chosen to "repair install" (must have edited the BOOT.INI wrong).

So sorry jaclaz/tech4niq for my own personal shortcomings/haste (been a rough millennium)...

Oops... forgot to mention the net result above is the same as my previous post...

Edited by submix8c
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