adding an ide drive to my sata set up wont work

ChrisLX200 · 26 Apr 2006 at 14:18

Oh dear, yes you do need the administrator password. When XP was first installed it would have requested you make one, so there will be one even though your machine is set to automatically log you in.

Not a good situation, but there are free utilities available if you type something like "Lost administrator password for Windows XP" into google.

http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/lost-my-windows-xp-password-how-to-recover
is an example.

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 15:48

smids said:
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 :eek:

smids · 26 Apr 2006 at 20:32

sare^baw's said:
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

When it says that, you are in the recovery console - it's not automatic!

Type 'help' to list the commands (without the ' ' ).

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 20:55

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 :eek:

sare^baw's · 27 Apr 2006 at 18:43

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?