ok heres my problem. I wanted to reformat windows so I went into "windows xp proffesional
setup"(booted to recovery disk).I have 2 internal hard drives, so I deleted them both. then
I installed windows on 1 of them and turned the other into a partition. after I turned the
second drive into a partition and pressed f3 to exit, I got the message...

"Windows XP is not completly set up on your computer. If you quit setup now, you will need

to run setup again to set up windows XP.

>to continue setup press enter
>to quit setup, press F3"

, so I just thought thats weird and exited because I knew I had installed windows on the
first drive. everything works fine except when I restart the computer without the recovery
disk inside, before windows starts I get the message "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK
AND PRESS ENTER". if I go into "windows xp professional setup" and then press f3 to exit it
gives me the message "Windows XP is not completly set up on your computer. If you quit setup
now.......".

What is wrong and how do I fix it?

I could just change my boot order, but Im concerned this might be causing my computer
problems that I cannot see.

This post has been edited by stewie69: May 6 2008, 08:26 PM

Hi stewie69...

Let's start with a look at the boot.ini file. Right click on My Computer and choose "Properties". Click the "Advanced" tab, then, in the Startup and Recovery section, click the "Settings" button. In the window that opens, click on the "Edit" button...a notepad window will open (boot.ini). Copy the contents of that window and paste it here for me.

wannabe1

Just a guess, but it sounds to me like you installed XP on drive 2 then deleted/formatted drive 1. When you did that you wiped out 3 files that XP always installs on the first boot drive that are required for XP to boot. The files are

ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini

here is the contents...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect





so what your saying is, if I make the drive partition first then install windows on the other drive, it may work? I am pretty sure I already tryed that and I got the same problem.

________________________________________________________________________________
_____

I got another question... Is what I did supposed to work? Because Im not very experienced with reformatting computers.

Also, if I lower the # beside timeout in my boot.ini file, will my computer start up faster?

This post has been edited by stewie69: May 7 2008, 08:22 PM

Don't lower the Time Out value until we're absolutely sure we won't be needing a few seconds to select a boot option.

Which drive and which partition on the drive is Windows installed on? The boot file shows Windows installed on the first partition of the Primary drive...this is as it should be in a normal installation. If you have installed onto a different drive or partition, this boot configuration would definitely throw an error message...or fail to boot.

Currently windows is installed on the D: drive and the partition is the C: drive. So its kinda weird.. Id assume windows would think the C: drive is the primary drive. What is probably worth mentioning is, before I reformatted my computer, i had it in the repair shop. The guy at the repair shop told me he was going to reformat my computer and he was going to install windows on my D: drive instead of my C: drive (which it had originally been on) because the D: drive was empty. Ive only been having the problem since I personally reformatted later. Maybe the repair shop guy changed something in the BIOS or something to make the D: drive my primary drive?

Another thing that is worth mentioning is that, I actually tryed installing windows once on the C: drive and I still had the exact same problem.

The problem that I got my computer repaired for has absolutly nothing to do with this current problem.

Another thing I should say (which might already be obvious) is that I have 2 physical Hard Drives in my computer. My intent was to install windows on 1 and make the other one a partition so that windows would recognize it.

Last thing Id like to say.. I ultimatly would like windows to be installed on my C: drive, because that drive is just a tad bit better than my D: drive.

This post has been edited by stewie69: May 7 2008, 09:40 PM

Now would be a good time for this...it will straighten out the boot configuration when you format the drive and reinstall Windows. Disconnect the D: drive when you do this and it will set the boot instructions for the single drive.

another thing, I should probably mention is that I had a new motherboard installed recently (when I got my computer repaired) and apparently 1 of the hard drives had to be connected unconventionally because there wasnt enough particular types of ports or something.

Also, I got another solution that might work for me. I was wondering about your opinion on it...

I will install windows on one drive, then instead of turning the other drive into a partition using "windows setup" I will go
inside windows and search for new hardware,as a different way of detecting the other drive,hopefully without problems. I havent tryed this yet though.

This post has been edited by stewie69: May 8 2008, 08:34 PM

Let's explore the "unconventional" part a little bit.

Do you know what motherboard was used and how the drives were connected to it? Did they perhaps use a PCI/SATA port board to connect the SATA drive...or the other way around...a PCI/IDE board to connect the IDE drive? This unconventional configuration will make a big difference when you go to install the operating system.

Knowing the make and model number of the motherboard may help us determine which method was used to configure the drives.

I dunno whether its ide or sata or what. I do remember him saying that he needed some kind of long cord to connect the drive inside the computer..

My motherboard is an ASUS M2N-SLI DELUXE


Oh yeah, and I dont know if this changes anything but Im now getting a different message instead of "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" when I restart my computer without the recovery disk. Instead, the message is...

"
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.

Please check the windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

This post has been edited by stewie69: May 11 2008, 05:54 PM