StickyLlama

[PROBLEM/RESOLUTION] PROBLEM Yep, I had partioned with a primary partition on the secondary drive - [RESOLUTION] I deleted all partions on the 2nd Drive - Made an Extended one instead. Populated it with logical partitons and picked one of those to do the secondary Win XP install in Voila , No more install problems Thanks everyone esp. Trance Energy

Really ? Woah - Ok but I don't want to go changing my original drive ... would it work if I set all partitions on the new drive as logical ? Can I actually do that ? (no primary partition on the whole of a physical drive ?) (Not at home yet to try)

Thanks again GMan for the reply Firstly - I think the drivers were needed , because the very first time round - I used a nlite install without the drivers and the drives were not recognised So I had to go get them off dell, intergrate and it worked ( I don't have an floppy drive for the F6 option) Re the boot.ini The two entries with the switches - was the original ini file created after the new XP install The two entires without the switches are the ones entered ( appended by XP) after the bootcfg /rebuild I have gone through and selected each entry individually from the boot menu and tried to boot from it. The only successful boots are to the Old installation - both the new drive boot and the signature(2cd09) boot fail withe the same error. Now I am not familiar with the XP install process - but is that what it tries to do ? continue the install by forcing a boot from the XP CD ? If so, is it possible that it is the signature(2cd09) entry is incorrect somehow ? Or maybe that some hardware setup/driver is not being picked up ? Or does XP continue the install from the 'just copied' files to the new drive ? And therefore somehow the recognition of that drive from the boot menu is incorrect ? Sorry for all the questions but I'm not sure what XP is expecting in the next stage of installation, if I did, I could concentrate on that area i.e does it go to the CD ? Does it go to the new partition ? what does it expect etc. What could I be missing...blah blah Maybe I should just reformat and try again. However I do have the impression that if I was doing this for the first time on just one drive I would still have the same problem...

Sorry -didn't explain myself very well I AM trying to have a Dual boot setup. I would like to keep my original as default and then have the stripped down new version on the extra drive as another load option. I don't want to disconnect the first drive and to be honest I shouldn't have to change the order of the disk access (Shouldn't it know where to launch it from when chosen from the boot menu if the menu is correct ?) I really think there has been a problem whilst at the beginning of the install process of the other XP version on the new drive. And I'm guessing its something to do with the SATA drivers... ? Anyone had a similar problem ? Cheers

Hi, Bought a new SATA drive Partitioned and set it up Created myself a slipstreamed nLite version including drivers from NVidia which were suggested by dell for my 1st SATA drive. Ran the XP install - it saw both SATA drives. allowed me to pick the 2nd for install Did all the copying of files - went to re-boot After the bootloader I got a "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." error Looked at the boot.ini - did some research on the internet Brought up the repair console - did the bootcfg /rebuild picked both installs and entered the info needed rebooted again - same problem looked at the boot.ini After the REBUILD I saw it had put scsi(1) for the drive - I amended it and put multi(1) instead and rebooted again still the same problem. is now [boot loader] timeout=10 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(1)disk(2)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="New Windows XP" multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Old Windows XP" signature(2cd09)disk(2)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="New XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Old XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect Granted I haven't got to properly install the 2nd XP verson yet - it only got to the first re-boot after copying the files Did I do something wrong ? Is the error because it now cannot find the SATA driver on the new partition to continue ? Should I have found specific drivers for the new SATA drive ? Even though it was recognised by the Dell/Nvidia ones ? I haven't a clue about the first entry it made signature(2cd09) blah blah in the boot.ini Any clues, advice , help would be very grateful ty [PROBLEM/RESOLUTION] PROBLEM Yep, I had partioned with a primary partition on the secondary drive - [RESOLUTION] I deleted all partions on the 2nd Drive - Made an Extended one instead. Populated it with logical partitons and picked one of those to do the secondary Win XP install in Voila , No more install problems Thanks everyone esp. Trance Energy