alright, this is rather embarassing. i have reformatted my hard disks and reinstalled windows plenty of times. i recently decided to use my 250gb sata hd, which currently has windows on it, as a storage disk. i have a 60gb that i wanted to load windows and mandriva onto. so i disconnected my sata hd and put in my 60gb, hooking it up to my primary ide slot and hooking up my cdroms to the secondary slot. the hd is currently set as the master. i loaded up my computer, changed my boot order so it reads the cdrom drive first and put in my windows cd. first off, it was taking FOREVER. way slower than normal, it usualy cranks. so i finaly got into the windows installation and formated the main partition to NFTS. it copies the installation files, restarts (still slow as hell), then goes back into the installation program. it won't do anything but replace the installation files or install to a new directory. it won't load off the hard disk either (i tried changing the boot order back). usualy this is a no-brainer. i've installed windows many times before, both the home and pro editions, but have never had this happen. i've never used this 60gb for running an OS before. do i need to make some new partition or something?? i really don't know what to do. any help would be appreciated!
installing xp on a new hd
- Thread starter dan246
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PP Mguire
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plug your 250gig back in and format the HD from inside windows. then try booting from the cd and and use a fresh install.
man i don't know if i changed some settings in my BIOS or something but i cannot get this to work. i formatted from within windows like you said, but it didn't help. it's like it doesn't regocnize that i've already begun the installation. so after it copies the setup files all it can do is replace the files or write the setup files to a new directory. this is really bizzare. i've never had problems before. as for running two copies of windows, i wasn't planning on it. i was planning on installing windows to this 60gig then backing up my files from the 250gig on the 60gb and some dvds. then i wanted to reformat that drive and load the files back onto it. ok so here's the deal. i can boot from the windows cd and a windows floppy boot disk. like i said before...it takes so long! i've got a gig of memory and an athlon 64 processor, it shouldn't be so sluggish. it started when i added on this 60gb ide drive. i might have changed a few settings within my BIOS, but i've tried all possible combinations now (with my primary drives, RAID controller, SATA, and boot order). this is really annoying and i will be pissed if i have to go pay 50$ for some dude to install windows for me. i've only used this 60gb as a storage device. it currently has 2 partitions. the first is small (8mb i think) and the other is NFTS for the remainder of the drive. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG????
jason_daniels
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try making your smaller drive slave and use the xp system recovery tool to try and recover or re install directly from the larger hard drive. i dont know if that will work but its worth a shot
ShoobieRat
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Put the 250 back in. Put the 60 in as "slave" and verify that the 250 is "Master" by both looking at the jumpers and in the BIOS.
Boot up to the 250.
Once Windows is up, use the "diskmgmt.msc" tool within Windows to format the 60GB drive so that it's blank.
Turn the machine off.
Take the 250 drive out completely. Put in the 60, and set it to "Master" (since in Slave you'll have problems, even if it's the only drive).
Verify that your CD-ROM is set to "Slave" or "Cable Select". Putting them on seperate IDE chains makes your life easier, too.
Boot up to BIOS, and verify that BIOS is all set drive-wise. Set your CD-ROM to boot FIRST.
Throw in the Windows CD, reboot, and let the CD do its thing. If your CD-ROM is still being slow, don't worry about it. You can update the drivers, BIOS and mobo drivers later, which should smooth things out. Right now, it's only an inconvenience.
Once Windows is fully installed, go through the usual reparti of Windows updates, driver updates (for ALL hardware) and make sure everything is stable and running as it should.
Once yer done with that, turn the machine off, and put in yer 250 drive. Make sure it's set to "Slave", and that it's on the same IDE chain as your Master drive. Though it really doesn't matter anymore, you should have your Master on the end of the chain, and yer slave on the center connector.
Boot up, go into BIOS and make sure yer 60 drive is the primary boot drive. (ie - 60/CD-ROM/250/Floppy, in that order)
Once Windows is up, go back into "diskmgmt.msc" and reformat that 250 to clean it off.
If you want, you can open up your boot.ini file (or access it through msconfig) and make sure yer 60 is the correct boot drive for Windows.
You should be okay.
Boot up to the 250.
Once Windows is up, use the "diskmgmt.msc" tool within Windows to format the 60GB drive so that it's blank.
Turn the machine off.
Take the 250 drive out completely. Put in the 60, and set it to "Master" (since in Slave you'll have problems, even if it's the only drive).
Verify that your CD-ROM is set to "Slave" or "Cable Select". Putting them on seperate IDE chains makes your life easier, too.
Boot up to BIOS, and verify that BIOS is all set drive-wise. Set your CD-ROM to boot FIRST.
Throw in the Windows CD, reboot, and let the CD do its thing. If your CD-ROM is still being slow, don't worry about it. You can update the drivers, BIOS and mobo drivers later, which should smooth things out. Right now, it's only an inconvenience.
Once Windows is fully installed, go through the usual reparti of Windows updates, driver updates (for ALL hardware) and make sure everything is stable and running as it should.
Once yer done with that, turn the machine off, and put in yer 250 drive. Make sure it's set to "Slave", and that it's on the same IDE chain as your Master drive. Though it really doesn't matter anymore, you should have your Master on the end of the chain, and yer slave on the center connector.
Boot up, go into BIOS and make sure yer 60 drive is the primary boot drive. (ie - 60/CD-ROM/250/Floppy, in that order)
Once Windows is up, go back into "diskmgmt.msc" and reformat that 250 to clean it off.
If you want, you can open up your boot.ini file (or access it through msconfig) and make sure yer 60 is the correct boot drive for Windows.
You should be okay.
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