"Error Loading Operating System"

[PeteW]

My normal copy of Windows XP on my primary HD monged up after putting in a new mobo, so I reinstalled it on my other hard disk which hadnt had windows installed on it before.

The installation seemed to go OK, it was all installed and it loaded up XP fine after installation and setup. But when I rebooted it now says 'Error Loading Operating System' in DOS when it should start loading.

ANy ideas why..?

Cheers

[jamin]

Which drive is the bios set to boot from mate? If it is still set to the naff drive then that may be the problem...

[PeteW]

no its set up to boot from the new install.

i did a google search and some people have found that doing an 'fdisk' fixes the problem. What does fdisk do? Does it format the disc, cos I cant afford to lose the data on this drive.

[Agent]

fdisk is a DOS tool for partitioning drives, maybe somthing is wrong with a partition ?
If you delete your partition with data on it, you will loose the data on it.

[jamin]

fdisk creates and modifies partitions on your hard drives. It is possible that your master boot record (mbr) has become damaged in which case you can use the command:

fdisk /mbr

which will repair it. But from what you have said, it doesn't sound as though the that is the case.

You can use fdisk to view partition information.

However, don't make any changes to the partitions with fdisk as any data on them will be deleted.

[PeteW]

Originally posted by jamin
fdisk creates and modifies partitions on your hard drives. It is possible that your master boot record (mbr) has become damaged in which case you can use the command:

fdisk /mbr

which will repair it. But from what you have said, it doesn't sound as though the that is the case.

You can use fdisk to view partition information.

However, don't make any changes to the partitions with fdisk as any data on them will be deleted.

fdisk /mbr was the command that others mentioned fixing this problem. But will it do anything to my data?

Cheers

[Spud1]

no that command should not - unless anything goes wrong such as a power surge etc. whenever you mess about with partitions etc you should always be prepared to lose data as it can happen - even though it is unlikely

[PeteW]

didnt work

[directhex]

there are a number of possibilities here

check you have no disks in drives, make sure you're set to boot from the correct drive and that one of the partitions on that drive is correctly set as active, try accessing the partitions via the recovery console (boot the xp cd), try removing all disk drives other than the one you want to boot from, try repartitioning & reformatting, amke sure that the boot partition is the first on the drive (or if not the first, that it's within the first 8Gb or 32Gb of the disk)

/me breathes

--jo

[PeteW]

after running fdisk /mbr it now says 'operating system not found' when booting. gonna try reinstalling it so it can at least load up once, and then i can back up the c: drive before reformatting and doing a fresh install....

[PeteW]

well the 2nd disk install booted up after install but ive not tried rebooting it since. this is what it did last time before it got the error.

So i now have access to my c: drive (the old one) which has all my windows settings on. I want to back all this up on the d: drive so I can copy it back after a format and fresh install.
Is it as simple as copy and pasting the Documents and Settings folder, or is there more to it? I tried using the transfer settings tool but it cant copy from one pc to itself.

Any ideas..?

cheers

[PeteW]

well the second install seems to have it working... dunno why, but as long as it stays working, I dont care

Would still like to transfer across my old settings if anyone knows how to do it properly..?

Thanks for all your help folk!

[Lexeus]

To transfer settings from one windows installation to another go to:
Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Files and Settings Transfer Wizard

Use it to backup your old settings, then again to reatore them on the new installation

[PeteW]

thats what i tried but i couldnt work out how to transfer from one hard disk to another on the same PC. It wants you to connect 2 PCs via a cable or to back it up on one and restore on the other, which I cant do...