Did I kill my new PC?? - Overclock.net

beefdonkey · 09-21-07

I just bought a new pc and I installed another hdd from my old one. They've been working fine.

But I got a bug in my a$$ to install XP Pro on the old hdd that was partitioned into 2 partitions and had XP Pro on it (it was my main hdd on the old pc). So yay I installed it and now it only boots to XP!!! It doesn't ask if I want Vista or XP. I even tell it to boot from the old hdd and Xp boots

I installed it on the correct drive (I know by the size of it).

The hdds are both SATA.

I even disconnected the new one and the same error came up!!!

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

Because of the error, I remember when I was formatting to install XP, the drive letterings were messed up... didn't think nothing of it. I went by sizes and istalled on the 30GB partition of the second drive 320GB. The sizes match up..........

Please help...

**Chozart** · 09-21-07

First, your PC is just fine!!! No worries

What happened is that your Windows XP install overwrote the boot sector of your Vista disk. Let me see if I can find a solution (this should not be too hard)

Here is a good resource I think:
http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Quote:

When the system reboots it won’t bring up a boot menu. Although XP recognises the Vista partition it doesn’t recognise Vista itself.

The Windows XP bootloader gets installed to the MBR and Vista can no longer boot.

When XP loads, open up Windows Explorer and you’ll see something interesting – a C: and (in this case) an E: drive.

The C: drive contains Windows Vista, and as Windows XP can read NTFS partitions, it can browse and modify Vista’s file structure.

More importantly, applications which have installation paths hard-coded into their install scripts rather than using Windows system parameter variables could easily dump files into C: when they should be installing to E:. This isn’t such a great situation.

Something like this makes sense?

This should fix part 1:

Quote:

Restoring Vista and dual booting
Because you can’t use the Windows XP bootloader to boot Vista, we have to reinstate Vista’s bootloader to the MBR and configure it to manage both operating systems.

Compared with scenarios involving Ubuntu where you have to reinstall the GRUB bootloader, getting Vista up and operational again is very easy.

Boot from the Vista DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to “Install now”, select “Repair your computer”.

The next screen searches for local Vista installations – there should only be one, so click Next.

This loads the System Recovery Options screen. Select the first option – Startup Repair. This looks for problems which would prevent Vista from loading (like a missing bootloader) and automatically fixes them.

If you click on “Click here for diagnostic and repair details” and scroll to the bottom of the list, it shows that the problem detected and repaired was a corrupt boot sector (according to Vista, anyway).

Click Close and then Finish, and the system will restart and boot into Vista.

Now, we can boot back into Vista (I hope)

Next, of course, you want to be able to boot into both:

Quote:

Now we need to enable dualbooting with XP, and EasyBCD is the best application to achieve this.

Download and install EasyBCD.

Launch the app and go to Add/Remove Entries.

Under “Add an Entry” and under the Windows tab and select in the Version drop-down list “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3”.

Change the Drive to E: and the name to “Windows XP”, then click “Add Entry” and “Save”.

Reboot the system and you’ll have two entries in the Vista bootloader, and can boot into either operating system.

. Here they use 'E' as drive letter... just make sure you use the correct one (the disk that contains XP, but with the drive letter assigned by Vista, since you're tinkering in Vista's bootloader). I hope this all works.

IwubAMD · 09-21-07

oh man, i will NEVER mess around with installing multiple versions of windows on the same pc, even if they are seperate physical disks, always ends in a headache

good luck, lesson learned

(ive done similar things)

**Chozart** · 09-21-07

It isn't all that hard... just need to make sure the boot sectors and boot loaders play nice. I am pretty sure he can fix it with the instructions from that article I linked (of which I picked out the relevant parts).

beefdonkey · 09-21-07

I know I suck

But I've always heard about dual boot pcs and stuff... I just wanted to see the performane difference between the two OSs...

My hope is resting with Chozart...

This is an HP and It didn't come with any disks

It's like a week old....

**Chozart** · 09-21-07

Quote:

Originally Posted by beefdonkey

I know I suck

But I've always heard about dual boot pcs and stuff... I just wanted to see the performane difference between the two OSs...

My hope is resting with Chozart...

This is an HP and It didn't come with any disks

It's like a week old....

See my first post. Try that, but be careful.