stu22

Hi guys, I’m pretty newb at this so please bear with me, I did try the search feature but I’m having a bit of trouble articulating the problem, even outside of the search bar.
At the moment I have windows installed on a 35gb partition of a 120gb Western Digital SATA HDD (7,200rpm). I also have a 320gb western digital caviar drive (also SATA, running at 7,200rpm) which is used almost exclusively for game installs and backups of my dvd collection (things I generally don’t get rid of). Anyway of late I haven’t been able to load windows from the 35gb partition, not alone at least. It simply asks me to insert some form of bootable media and press any key to continue (pressing any key brings up the same message again). If I plug in my sisters 60gb Segate ATA hdd (5,400rpm), also with windows xp installed, and try to boot it recognizes it and gives me the option of the windows install on my sisters drive, or the windows install on my 35gb partition. While this works fine (its what I’m using at the moment) it simply isn’t practical as it means I can’t use my second cd drive and my sister wants her drive back. Anyway, what could be causing my system not to recognize the 35gb partition as a bootable item, and I guess more importantly can it be fixed.
Thanks heaps for hearing me out and thanks even more for any responses


* Power Supply – generic brand, 450W, 16A on the +12v rails
* Motherboard – ASRock P4i65G
* CPU – Intel 3.2Ghz Prescot
* RAM – pqi DDR 400, single 1gb stick
* Video Card(s) – Powercolour nVidia AGP 128mb 6600GT
* Hard Drive(s) – 120gb Western digital 7,200rpm SATA drive, 33.6gb partion (D - Windows install), 78.1gb partition (E - music, photos etc)
-320gb Western digital 7,200rpm SATA drive, single 298gb partition (G - games)
-My sisters 60gb Segate 5,400rpm ATA drive, single 55.8gb partition, been in since my last reformat, but she'd like it back
* Operating System - Windows XP Pro (on disk drive D - what I use)
-Windows XP Pro (on disk drive C - what just sits there

dai

your under powered to start with
disconnect our sisters drive
boot from the xp cd and choose install
when it says press R for repair
press R
now in the the recovery console type
fixboot
and press enter

stu22

I disconnected the sister drive, booted from the xp cd, chose repair and it asked me
"Which windows installation would you like to log onto
<To Cancel, Press Enter>
1. C:\Windows"
In my computer the drive which usually has windows installed is titled D, but I only had the one option, so I went with 1. I typed fixboot so the command line read "C:\Windows>fixboot", but I got an error message saying "FIXBOOT cannot find the system drive, or the specified drive is not valid"

By "under powered", do you mean the the amperage on the 12V rails?

dai

underpowered in general,generic 450w,you would expect to see a min quality 550w+ running the system
try
D:\Windows
the mbr is usually always on C
is C a seperate drive or is D a partition on the same drive

stu22

In my computer:
C is usually my sisters 60gb hdd
D is the first (34gb) partition of my 120gb drive and contains windows
F is the second (78gb) partition of my 120gb hard drive and has general media files
G is my 320gb drive and holds all my games

How do i access D:\Windows?
In the windows repair utility (accessed after booting from the xp cd and pressing r), when it asked me what windows installation I wanted to access it only gave me the one option of "1. C:/Windows" the field would only allow a single character and I tried "d" and even "2" before settling with "1" which is C:/Windows. The only hard drive that was connected during this was the 120gb drive.

The computer was running perfectly for a couple of years on a generic 380W psu, and the 450W psu has been fine in all games.

BTW, is mbr the master boot record (yes I'm newb at this)

MaverickUK

MBR is the Master Boot Record, yes.

stu22

Any ideas on accessing D:\Windows and running fixboot?

dai

do a repair install
boot from the xp cd and choose install
ignore the first repair option and continue with install
when windows finds the previous installation
then do the repair

stu22

I tried and it didn't give me the option to repair. Selecting the 35gb partition came up with a message that directory already existed and continuing with the installation would delete all the files in My Documents, the Desktop and anything in the Windows file.
Will I just have to back up these files and re-install or is there a better way? Also is this likely to fix the problem?

dai

if you have sp2 installed and your disk does not contain it,you will need to slipstream it in,to make a disk you can run the repair with