Page 1 of Help Required With Booting XP After Hard Drive Upgrade

Hi Guys,

I hope that some wise peeps out there may be able to help me??

I`ve just installed a bigger hard drive and copied files across using Norton Ghost.

When it comes to booting i get an error saying PXE-E61, then it goes on to say `Non system disk`

I`ve managed to get my PC to boot by copying the files NTLDR, NTDETECT & BOOT.INI to a floppy.

Somewhere along the line it looks as though my PC maybe trying to boot from a network connection, I`ve looked in the Setup to see if I can disable this feature but no luck!

Has anybody any ideas where I should dump these files or how to disable the network boot??

Thanks in advance

MIB

Forgot to say, these files are in the root of C: but I can`t see them on windows explorer, I`ve changed settings to show all files & folders but if I try to copy the files across they are already there!?

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The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, less than 100 were made. My father spent 3 years restoring this car.....it is his love.....it is his passion....."it is his fault he didn`t lock the garage!"

This item was edited on Friday, 10th November 2006, 22:00

Think your MBR is fritzed....

To recover it, do the following...

Boot from the windows XP CD, press the "R" key in the setup to start the recovery console. Select your windows XP installation from the list, and enter the administrator password. This will leave you with a command prompt.

Enter the command: "FIXMBR" (without the quotes) at the input prompt and confirm the next question with a "Y" . At the next prompt, type exit to reboot the computer.

That should do it (oh and don`t forget to remove the CD/any floppies on rebooting).

HTH


"Just CRAPtacular"

This item was edited on Saturday, 11th November 2006, 01:07

Sounds to me like its initially trying to boot from the NIC, in that case you need to go into the BIOS & set boot up sequence to:

FDD
HDD
CD
Disable LAN\network boot

You may also have a option to configure\disable LAN booting before it starts looking for a IP address if its not a onboard network card.

Have you fitted the new HDD in the place of the old & set jumpers to Master (if a IDE drive) & tried running it without the old drive connected?

What about refitting the old drive on its own, does the problem depart or remain the same?


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

This item was edited on Saturday, 11th November 2006, 10:12

Thanks for the replies.

Old drive works fine, have exchanged new for old & set jumpers the same.

I`ve managed to disable network boot, so I just get the `Non system disk` error.

Gonna give the FIXMBR a go to see if it helps, will let you know :/

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THE NO1 ONLINE ARCADE



The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, less than 100 were made. My father spent 3 years restoring this car.....it is his love.....it is his passion....."it is his fault he didn`t lock the garage!"

Well I tried FIXMBR, no difference at all.

I did get a message saying something like "Your system has a non standard boot record"??? Don`t know why. I did upgrade from Win98, would that make a difference??

Cheers again
MIB

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THE NO1 ONLINE ARCADE



The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, less than 100 were made. My father spent 3 years restoring this car.....it is his love.....it is his passion....."it is his fault he didn`t lock the garage!"

Would I be able to reinstall WinXP again over the top?

Do you think this would solve the problem??

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THE NO1 ONLINE ARCADE



The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, less than 100 were made. My father spent 3 years restoring this car.....it is his love.....it is his passion....."it is his fault he didn`t lock the garage!"

If the OS boots from the old drive without the error message, then perhaps a reimage of the drive to the new one would be in order.

Perhaps you could clone the drive keeping the partition to the same size as the original drive & using the "left over" space as a area for data.

Just a thought this isn`t a Tiny\Time or some such PC is it? As they have a hidden partition that does the actual booting up prior to XP loading.

Use Ghost to check & copy any hidden partitions if thats the case & then copy the rest of the old drive to the remaining space.



I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

This item was edited on Saturday, 11th November 2006, 21:13

OK

My next step before rebuilding would be a repair install.

Boot from your XP CD, and when prompted go for the install XP option.
The setup will then look for an existing installation and tell you that it has found an existing copy of XP and display a list of options, on of which will be repair existing install (r). Run this to completion and it should solve any boot problems you have without messing up your existing installation.

NB this is not the recovery console option - go past that screen untill you see the option to repair.

If this doesn`t work then as a last ditch-you-may-lose-it-all-and-have-to-start-again option, try booting with a Win 98 boot disk (command prompt) and try typing FDISK /MBR.
I`ve been told this works but I haven`t done it myself so `caveat emptor` dude!

Hope you can get it up and running soon, anyway.

Edit: Before you try all this, can you compare the BOOT.INI file on your floppy to the one on your hard drive (it`s hidden, system, read only and in the root of c: - use command prompt and ATTRIB command with -H -S to show it with TYPE or DIR commands).
If Rassillon`s right, you may find the C: drive`s boot.ini file is trying to boot from a second partition you don`t have! The solution is to copy the floppy BOOT.INI to the C: drive as you know this works. HTH



"Just CRAPtacular"

This item was edited on Sunday, 12th November 2006, 18:27

Just a further thought, if it is trying to boot from a hidden partition, a complete wipe of the disk may not solve anything. The Tiny PC HDD that someone cleaned using DBAN before installing a clean build wouldn`t boot because the BIOS was crippled to look for the Tiny hidden partition.

Hopefully I am not reading too much into all this & worrying about things that are not actually there.


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

First thing - Thanks for your help and interest in my situation!!

There`s more........

I`ve got my original drive (that boots fine) to fall back on if all else fails.

Right then, I managed to get rid of the system disk error, I used disk management and changed the drive (new cloned one) to the system drive....rebooted....now get a message saying "NTLDR Missing" (Would boot from floppy)

So I tried the original drive, boots fine.

The PC isn`t a Tiny et al special by the way.

Took your advice Rassilon and tried to clone the drive again......same message (NTDLR)

Tried a reinstall (over the top) with an XP disk....same message.

Spiny Norman.....I copied the BOOT.INI file from the floppy to the root of c: and this made no difference, also copied NTLDR & NTDETECT for good measure, but still no joy.

The thing about the hidden partition seems possible??

I can only see two further possibilities......
1) Backup the working original drive to my other (storage) drive, do a clean install on my new bigger root drive (the one that I have cloned but doesn`t boot) then restore the data from the backup file.

2) Take both drives (Booting & non Booting) to another completely separate PC, compare the root drive of each one (system, hidden & read only files) copy any files that don`t match across from the booting drive to the non booting drive.

Is there any way to give the BIOS a kick up the arse if it is looking for a `secret` partition.

Thanks again guys.

MIB

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THE NO1 ONLINE ARCADE



The 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, less than 100 were made. My father spent 3 years restoring this car.....it is his love.....it is his passion....."it is his fault he didn`t lock the garage!"

This item was edited on Monday, 13th November 2006, 06:59