80gb drive won't boot

[hougtimo]

Hi,

In my brothers pc (sempron 2800+ am2, 512mb ddr533 ram, 80gb hdd, 20gb hdd) the 80gb drivejust won't boot. We have had windows on the 20gb drive because of this, but the time has come forme to need the 20gb drive again. So I used acronis trueimage to copy his windows installation to the first partition on his 80gb drive, tried to boot and nothing. No boot menu, no errors nothing. Just a flashing cursor.

Things Ive checked:

Drive Jumpers

Cables

IDE ports

boot files on the drive

the partition is active

The OS is XP Home.

The drive is fine (i think) as when we boot with the 20gb drive (which works fine) all the partitions on the 80 gb drive are there and we can access everything as normal. It just won't boot windows from the 80gb drive.

80gb drive - excelstor

20gb Drive = seagate

(Both drives are IDE)

If anyone can shed any light on what is wrong it'd be very helpful!

HougTimo

[hougtimo]

EDIT :: Just tried XP recovery console and tried fixmbr and fixboot - still no luck.

[3aces]

have you tried installing windows on the 80gb without the 20gb connected

[hougtimo]

Trying that now on a sep partition. I'll let you know how it goes.

[DL.]

Get PowerMax and run a full disk scan on the drive.

[hougtimo]

XP reinstall didn't work. straight after the test-based portion of setup....wouldnt boot. same as before just a black screen with flashing cursor. I'm runnin out of ideas here.....

[DL.]

Make sure it's set as primary boot device in BIOS.

Have you checked the drive thoroughly with some disk software like the one I suggested?

The drive might be failing, if so, a replacement is highly recommended.

[DL.]

Edit: Mods remove this double post, I received a "connection timed out"-error (my connection has been a bit shaky today).

Edited January 3, 2007 by DL.

[LLXX]

Delete NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI.

Re-run XP setup.

[hougtimo]

I tried everything everone has suggested. the drive is fine, i blanked the whole thing so it was one large 80gb space...still no luck! reset the bios ... you name it, i've tried it!

i really don't kno what to do now...

[ripken204]

EDIT :: Just tried XP recovery console and tried fixmbr and fixboot - still no luck.

strange that this didnt work...

have u tried unplugging the 20gig drive? only use the 80gig?

[hougtimo]

yep....a day later and still no joy.

[dirtwarrior]

Tim try unplugging the 20 set the jumpers on the 80 as master. Run a software to zero fill HD then reformat and install windows. Sounds like there is a bad sector and zero fill might fix it.