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Specifying boot volume

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3 replies

by link2ajg

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I recently added a fast hard drive to my system using an ATA pci card and copied the contents of my C drive to it. I want to boot from that volume to gain the speed advantage. All Win tech support docs I have seen assume different systems are installed in a multiple system configuration and you specify the system you want to boot. My system now has WinXP on two different volumes and I want to secify the the fast boot volume. How is that done?

3 replies

by rcaracas

Try this one if it will help.

Click [Start] and right click on [My Computer]
Select [Properties]
Select the [Advanced] tab
In the [Startup and Recovery] section, click [Settings]
In the [System Startup] section, click [Edit] to open the boot.ini file in Notepad
You will see a line that looks similar to the one below

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

To disable the Startup Screen change to line to read as below. The change is shown in red.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /sos
Note: There is a space between 'fastdetect' and '/sos'

Close Notepad, clicking [Yes] when Notepad asks if you want to save your changes.
Click [OK] [Apply] and [OK] to exit System Properties
Reboot computer and the Startup Screen will be gone.

by link2ajg

Don't understand how the proposed solution, which apparently disables the startup screen, forces the computer to boot from logical volume I instead of logical volume c

by thechas

First, if you copied the files onto the new hard drive using Windows Explorer or another file manager, the drive may not be a bootable volume.

To be a bootable volume, a hard drive has to have the Primary Partition set as active, AND the system files properly written to the drive.

With a PCI IDE card, you need to set your BIOS boot option to SCSI.
In BIOS settings, SCSI is generically used to tell the BIOS to use an external drive controller as the boot device.

On some motherboards, I have had problems booting up from an external controller with ANY drive connected as the Primary master drive on the on-board IDE controller.

Now, after the BIOS setting is correct, if you get a non-system disk error, you may need to perform a repair installation of XP.

Boot from the XP CD.
When the prompt appears, press the key to add a drive controller.
Insert the floppy disk that came with your IDE card.
Then, continue to run setup, you will have an option to repair your existing Windows installation.
Choose this option to save your system settings.

Chas

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