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Problem with OS Boot up

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by tonya.oldfather

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I have a question and I?m hoping someone can help me.

I tried to install an OS system on my external hard drive. The external HD is fine but I am now having problems with my Main internal HD. My internal HD is trying to look for XP (which is what I put on the external) when it boots up but it should look for XP Media Center. I can get by this if I do a F2 and choose the operating system. To me there should be away to tell the BIOS I want to boot up with the Media Center and not the external one that is not there. Now mind you when I do this my external is NOT connected at all. I think what happened was somehow XP got copied to my internal HD not sure if that is even possible? But if you can understand this please help, otherwise it?s just a pain to press a button all the time.

Thank you, Tonya

8 replies

by Former member

Make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the drive that you want, example of my settings:
1). First boot device: CD/DVD drive.
2). Second boot device: Floppy drive.
3). Third boot device: Hdd (Master hdd if IDE type). If SATA drives then you will have to bring the SATA drive to the top of the list in the hdd section so that it is seen in the boot section of where you can then make it the third boot device in the list.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.
If this information is useful, please mark as helpful. Thanks.

by ---tk---

its looking for the external, because the drive was installed while installing the OS... if you edit the boot.ini file you can set the default, time alloted to choose the OS that you want... its kinda (not really)like the GRUB for linux... chooses where to boot...

by neon samurai

Hopefully the post I'm replying too correct your issue but it may also be a boot sector problem if that newer install wrote it's boot sector information to the internal hard drive.

It's drastic in that you may be blocking the external drive from being bootable after but you can try to boot from the winXP disk, go into the console and use "fixmbr".

If that blocks the external drive from being bootable, you may be able to temporarily unplug the internal drive, attach the external and do the fixmbr process again. Hopefully it will then apply the master boot record rebuild to the usb drive. If all goes well, you may then be able to reattach the itnernal drive and boot from either by flippign the bios setting between the two.

by older mycroft

Thus, effectively whichever way you have done it, the boot files AND the choice HAS to be on your internal C: drive.

Creating a boot option to an external drive that then ups and disappears, would confuse even the most sophisticated system.

Without suitable alterations to the 'boot.ini' file on the internal drive, any possibility of choosing between systems is going to be cumbersome. I'd stick with pressing the button unless you can guarantee that the external drive will ALWAYS be connected at boot.

by neon samurai

Just to add, the Microsoft OS must boot from C:'s master boot record.

If one can install Grub or Lilo, they don't care if it's the first hard drive, flashdrive or floppy they load from. The limitation though is probably requiring a Linux install or liveCD when installing or adjusting the Grub/Lilo configuration.

He could try the SuperGrub liveCD though also. I've used it to rescue a few installs after chewing the boot loader. It will detect most bootable OS and give the option to try and start them up.

by tonya.oldfather

Thank you all for the wonderful advice and the prompt responses, I am at work right now I will look these over more in depth later tonight once I get home and then I will let you know what works.

Tonya

by juwins007

There is a computer i inserted a new formatted hard disk loaded with win xp professional, so when i try putting the system on it only shows some cmos errors at first time and i hit f1 but it didn't boot to windows i shut down and i try booting again, it brought up the same error and i noticed i had to set the time and date, after that i expect to continue booting so it shows me the options at boot menu like....boot in safe mode,from networking or start windoes normally. but i have a problem the keyboard doesn't move again to select the options...i try again samething, i removed the cmos clean it, samething change memory slot just show me cmos error all that but when i have the date inserted it still freezes the keyboard and will not boot when it count to zero.

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