Can't boot XP off new SATA drive

My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB Caviar Blue SATA drive, partitioned into five. I
installed XP SP2, direct from a Microsoft CD, onto the partition (L
that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my system. (The Seagate
drive will be removed after transferring its files to the WE 500GB, with
new drive letters so there is no conflict with two C: partitions; in the
end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"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."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500GB I've been using without any problems; it just displays a black
screen with a blinking hyphen in the top left corner.

Device Manager lists the drive. The driver is dated 7/1/2001, but using
DM to search for a newer one didn't find any.

Windows Explorer recognizes the new drive and its partitions, so I'm not
sure if Windows XP SP2 needs special SATA drivers that I have to
download and install. Of course I can't upgrade to SP3 (and the
hotfixes) if I can't boot from L:.

The most conspicuous difference in the new installation on partition L:
compared to what's on C: is that there are only five folders (RECYCLER,
Program Files, System Volume Information, Documents and Settings and
WINDOWS) in partition L: and no files. In particular, there is no
boot.ini file.

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot off the SATA drive?

Thanks,

R1

"Rebel1" wrote in message
...

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot off the SATA drive?

The query omitted how (bootable) old C: was transferred to make
(bootable) new C: Western Digital's cloning software has done
this successfully on my systems. Regular copying does not.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.

Did you press F6 during installation to load the SATA driver for that
motherboard?

--
@~@ Remain silent. Nothing from soldiers and magicians is real!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
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http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

On 7/8/2012 7:56 AM, Man-wai Chang wrote:

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.

Did you press F6 during installation to load the SATA driver for that
motherboard?


That's something I never tried. But at this point, I can't get to the
screen that asks me to do that. When I try booting from the new drive,
everything stops after the POST. That is, a black screen with a blinking
cursor at the top left.

Thanks for the suggestion. When I had seen the F6 prompt, I didn't think
it applied to me.

R1

Two other considerations.

I may already have the SATA drivers on my C: drive as part of the
updates from SP2. They may be in the Windows/System32/drivers folder,
but I don't know how to identify them. There aren't any files in the
System32 folder (and subfolders) that have sata as part of their
filenames. If I could find them, I could copy them to the drivers folder
to the L: drive.

I used EASEUS Partition Manager to partition my new drive. All of its
partitions are described a logical, and none is "active" or "primary."
By contrast, my existing C: drive is marked as a System drive and
Primary, and my Seagate drive has one of its partitions marked as Primary.

So the problem is while I know how to use Partition Manager to set a
Primary drive as Active, I can't figure how to first tell it to make L:
a primary partition. Also, there is the issue that there is no boot.ini
in the L: partition.

Partition Manager shows a graphical representation of each physical
drive as a rectangle. Within each rectangle, there are smaller
rectangles, one for each partition. For my SATA drive, the L: partition
is not the leftmost. From left to right, they are P:, M:, N:, L:, O:.
May mean nothing, but the other two drives show the letters in
alphabetical order and the leftmost as being Primary.

It also may mean nothing, but there are 8 MB of unallocated space on my
new drive that Partition Manager simply refuses to remove. Neither of my
older drives has such unallocated space. Maybe it's reserved for SATA
overhead.

On 7/8/2012 7:55 AM, Don Phillipson wrote:
"Rebel1" wrote in message
...

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot off the SATA drive?

The query omitted how (bootable) old C: was transferred to make
(bootable) new C: Western Digital's cloning software has done
this successfully on my systems. Regular copying does not.

I used the original Microsoft XP SP2 CD.

On 08/07/2012 6:24 AM, Rebel1 wrote:
My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB Caviar Blue SATA drive, partitioned into five. I
installed XP SP2, direct from a Microsoft CD, onto the partition (L
that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my system. (The Seagate
drive will be removed after transferring its files to the WE 500GB, with
new drive letters so there is no conflict with two C: partitions; in the
end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"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."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500GB I've been using without any problems; it just displays a black
screen with a blinking hyphen in the top left corner.

There are several possibilities that come to mind:

(1) You have to mark new boot partition as "active" through the Disk
Manager when you are in the old Windows.

(2) Your current XP is setup to work only with IDE drives, rather than
SATA drives. SATA drives can be made to look like standard IDE drives,
but you have to do that in BIOS. When you go into the BIOS setup, make
sure you select IDE rather than AHCI or RAID modes. There is no
performance difference between IDE and AHCI mode, just a few extra power
management features which are unimportant in desktops.

(3) Why are you partitioning these drives so heavily? I agree that it's
a good idea to partition out the boot partition on its own into a small
100-200GB partition, but I'd just keep the remainder of the drive as one
single separate partition. This might be confusing boot process.

(4) Why are you setting up a new XP rather than cloning the old XP?

Yousuf Khan

Here's what Microsoft has to say:
• You cannot mark a logical drive as active.
• You can only mark a partition as active on a master boot record (MBR)
disk.

(https://www.microsoft.com/resources/....mspx?mfr=true)

On the new drive, all the partitions are logical. So the problem becomes
making the new drive a MBR drive.

On 7/8/2012 5:24 AM, Rebel1 wrote:
My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB Caviar Blue SATA drive, partitioned into five. I
installed XP SP2, direct from a Microsoft CD, onto the partition (L
that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my system. (The Seagate
drive will be removed after transferring its files to the WE 500GB, with
new drive letters so there is no conflict with two C: partitions; in the
end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"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."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500GB I've been using without any problems; it just displays a black
screen with a blinking hyphen in the top left corner.

Device Manager lists the drive. The driver is dated 7/1/2001, but using
DM to search for a newer one didn't find any.

Windows Explorer recognizes the new drive and its partitions, so I'm not
sure if Windows XP SP2 needs special SATA drivers that I have to
download and install. Of course I can't upgrade to SP3 (and the
hotfixes) if I can't boot from L:.

The most conspicuous difference in the new installation on partition L:
compared to what's on C: is that there are only five folders (RECYCLER,
Program Files, System Volume Information, Documents and Settings and
WINDOWS) in partition L: and no files. In particular, there is no
boot.ini file.

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot off the SATA drive?

Thanks,

R1


You neglected to mention if you installed the SATA drivers. You need to
copy the drivers from your MOBO disk and when prompted press F6 to
install the drivers.

On 7/8/2012 10:38 AM, Rick wrote:
On 7/8/2012 5:24 AM, Rebel1 wrote:
My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB Caviar Blue SATA drive, partitioned into five. I
installed XP SP2, direct from a Microsoft CD, onto the partition (L
that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my system. (The Seagate
drive will be removed after transferring its files to the WE 500GB, with
new drive letters so there is no conflict with two C: partitions; in the
end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive, plugged into port 1, and
I've chosen the SATA setting. (The drive is capable of 6Gbps, but the
mobo only handles 3Gbps.) I'm able to install XP onto its L: partition.
But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it refuses to do
so. I get this message:

"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."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500GB I've been using without any problems; it just displays a black
screen with a blinking hyphen in the top left corner.

Device Manager lists the drive. The driver is dated 7/1/2001, but using
DM to search for a newer one didn't find any.

Windows Explorer recognizes the new drive and its partitions, so I'm not
sure if Windows XP SP2 needs special SATA drivers that I have to
download and install. Of course I can't upgrade to SP3 (and the
hotfixes) if I can't boot from L:.

The most conspicuous difference in the new installation on partition L:
compared to what's on C: is that there are only five folders (RECYCLER,
Program Files, System Volume Information, Documents and Settings and
WINDOWS) in partition L: and no files. In particular, there is no
boot.ini file.

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot off the SATA drive?

Thanks,

R1


You neglected to mention if you installed the SATA drivers. You need to
copy the drivers from your MOBO disk and when prompted press F6 to
install the drivers.

I can't find SATA drivers on the MOBO disk.