adding an ide drive to my sata set up wont work

[sare^baw's]

i bought a second hand htpc recently and it came fully set up, i have tried to add my 250gb maxtor ide drive to the pc but i cant get the pc to boot after installing the hdd.

the drives with the pc are a 36g raptor and a sata HITACHI DESKSTAR 160G, if i then install the maxtor it wont boot and i get an error

i dont know anything about raid but i wondering if the raptor and deskstar and set up in some raid configuration because if i unplug one or the other my pc wont boot up so it requires both hdd's to be installed for the pc to boot up. i just cant understand why the maxtor ide drive causes problems.

so can someone tell me what kind of set up i have here and how i go about installing my ide maxtor hdd.

cheers

 

[sare^baw's]

that is weird i never knew windows would put files on both drives.

if i try to change the drive letter of the deskstar in windows it tells me it is a system disc and i can change the drive letter.

i was experimenting and found the following when changing the boot sequence, seems the 160g deskdstar has to be the first boot device and raptor second, yet windows is installed on my raptor.

DESKSTAR 1ST BOOT - RAPTOR 2ND BOOT - OK

RAPTOR 1ST BOOT - DESKSTAR 2ND BOOT - ERROR - NTLDR MISSING

RAPTOR ONLY - ERROR - NTLDR MISSING

DESKSTAR ONLY – ERROR -WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE OF A HDD CONFIGURATION PROBLEM

 

[sare^baw's]

Good ole sensible Windows, eh?

Is there no way you can just nab the files off the Deskstar and plonk em in the Raptor?

SiriusB

yeah that would be easrier for now, i will do a fresh install at some point but would prefer a fix for this just now. i dont suppose theres any point trying to ghost windows onto a single hdd.

 

[sare^baw's]

smids cheers for the help but it did not work for me, i got this ERROR -WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE OF A HDD CONFIGURATION PROBLEM blah blah blah blah

so im back to the way i was, did you not need to edit the boot file in any way to do this or was it as simple as copy and pasting the files onto the c:

 

[sare^baw's]

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

ah that took a few attempts, had to remove the quoted text i used from your last post

 

[sare^baw's]

no joy, i copied all the text into the boot.ini file and saved it, started pc only using raptor hdd

the error i get says this file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system\hal.dll.

however i did a search for hal.dll on both hdd's and found it in C:\windows\system32

also i have a hidden folder showing on both drives called 'system volume information' should i have one of these on both drives?

 

[sare^baw's]

Yeah, there is usually a system volume information on all drives. The only way is to reinstall I'm afraid - it's looking to be more hassle than it's worth, especially as if you break it, you'll not be able to fix it easily.

ok thanks for all your help, i was looking at replacing the raptor soon anyway due to the noise it makes in my htpc, so maybe ill just replace it sooner and do a fresh install

 

[sare^baw's]

You could try connecting just the Raptor, then boot from the XP CD and 'repair' the existing installation on the Raptor. With a bit of luck that will notice the necessary boot information is missing and replace it...

is there any risk that i would lose any files doing this or would i need to back everything up?

 

[sare^baw's]

i tried using the repair feature in xp, when it boots from cd i pressed 'r' when prompted, i then chose c:\windows as the installation i wanted to repair, so i pressed '1' and enter, it then asked for admin password, i dont have this so i pressed enter and nothing happened.

So do i need the admin password, the pc is second hand and set up by the previous owner, i dont use a password or anything to log on.

 

[sare^baw's]

Hang on, did you press ENTER and then is just said
C:\WINDOWS>

If so, then there isn't an admin password because if you type the wrong one, or don't type one at all and press enter (and there is one set), it will tell you you have the wrong password. If it goes to a C:\Windows> prompt, then you are in.

yes thats right it said c:\windows>

and it just sat there and appeared to be doing nothing, or is that it doing something ooer

 

[sare^baw's]

ah i did that already, typed fixboot to try and fix the boot

but no joy it would not boot after that with 1 or both drives connected and with the boot order correct. l was quite peeved off at all this, i have this cd called ultimate boot disk which has lots of tools and utilities on it, so i ran a couple and finally managed to get my pc working again but still using 2 hard drives.

just glad i got it running again

 

[sare^baw's]

ok i installed my ide 250gb maxtor today, set it as the 3rd boot device with the 2 sata drive in the correct order, my pc wont boot, it says it is looking for hal.dll. file

any ideas why i cant add this ide drive to my pc?