Switching Windows Bootloader Drive ?

[Diademed]

Here's what happened:

1. Long ago, I installed windows on a PATA drive.

1. PATA drive began to die, I put Windows on my Sata Array.

1. I installed on the Sata array with the ATA drive hooked up, so Windows just added my Sata Array install to the bootloader of the PATA drive.

1. Now, my Sata array is my working install, after I boot to Windows, I have my Pata drive disabled, but I have to have it in order to boot to my Sata array.

1. That Pata drive is dying, took me 6 tries to boot up this morning... I get some sort of: "Can't read from the selected drive" error.

What I want to do:

• Switch the bootloader to the drive it should be on (the SATA array)

What I've tried:

• Boot to recovery console in the Sata install, and tried: fixboot, fixmbr, and whatever other commands seemed like they might work... more than I've listed, but I'm on *nix at the moment, and can't pull up a cmd console to check.

What I'd like:

• Help.

 

[Nothinman]

Your best bet is probably a repair install.

 

[Diademed]

It seems like it should be simpler than that... after all, it's just a bootloader =p

 

[Nothinman]

Yea but MS' bootloaders aren't terribly transparent. You might be able to get by copying ntldr and boot.ini to the new drive and running fixboot with the PATA drive disconnected. Also make sure the Windows partition is marked active in the partition tables, all the default MBR does is look for the first active partition and hand off control to it.

 

[Diademed]

Hmm...here's hoping the windows utility somewhat resembles the unix fdisk I'm used to.

Do ntldr.dll and boot.ini reside in system32?

 

[Nothinman]

You can use Linux fdisk to set the partition active, I actually don't know if there's a partitioner in the Windows rescue disc.

And no NTLDR and boot.ini go in the root of the drive.

 

[Diademed]

IIRC, you can boot to recovery console to run the fdisk command -- perhaps not, but I'll test it later today.

One thing I would like to avoid, if possible, would be trying to screw with the sata raid array in linux -- I've had less than good luck with it back when I tried to install FreeBSD.

 

[Nothinman]

Oh yea, you're using one of those BIOS-assisted RAID sets, good luck with that. =)

 

[Diademed]

Haha --
Ahh.... Thanks SiliconImage, for these delightful drivers.

I think I'll still rather copy ntldr and the boot ini before doing a repair install. Windows has a nasty habit of 'fixing' more than what's broken.

 

[Nothinman]

Some of those BIOS-assisted RAID controllers will work with dmraid, but I've never used it.

 

[Diademed]

Okay... I've tried a few things, and unsurprisingly have managed to hose it up.

First: moving ntldr and ntdetect.com and the boot.ini (rather, copying them) didn't do much.

I can't do a repair install, as the glorious Windows OS refuses to locate the install located on my RAID array, even though I can successfully get into that install with recovery console.

When I attempt to boot to my disk now, it informs me that it failed to read the boot path.

 

[Nothinman]

You might need to fix the paths in boot.ini since your drive numbers have changed.

 

[Diademed]

I don't see why the drive numbers should have changed...
There were entries for both drives, one of them should persist, even if they did change. Of course, if windows tries to parse every entry before displaying the screen... well, that'd be a bad implementation.

Regardless, I can no longer easily change my boot.ini, since I can no longer boot into that installation, and bootcfg doesn't recognize the install; that is, it is unsuccessful in scanning my HDD's for windows installations.

I can't seem to find the place where windows keeps the boot.ini, in any case; I don't think it's in the C:\.

 

[Nothinman]

Yes, boot.ini is right in the root of the boot drive.

 

[Diademed]

Maybe...it wasn't on either of my 2 drives ( pata or sata array).

Anyway, thanks for your help, Nothinman.

I'm about to reinstall though... At this point, it's not worth fighting.

This makes me sad.

Instead of giving file IO to the recovery console: You have to do this.

Instead of being able to easily edit your ini files, you have to use a dos1 era utility without the ability to handle non-standard hardware.

So now, instead of being able to fix my problem, I have to reinstall. Because my hardware isn't detected, I can't boot, I have to go through a 5-minute setup-load just to get to recovery console. Because windows screwed up my install in the first place. If I have 2 installs of windows, I DO NOT want the bootloaders for both to reside on the location of one of the drives. You'd think 2 installs on 2 drives would mean 2 completely separate machines, for all intents and purposes, available one at a time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

/rant.

:disgust:

 

[Nothinman]

Yup, the recovery console is pretty much only useful for fixmbr and fixboot, they crippled it pretty badly.

 

[nweaver]

you need to f6 and provide the drivers to do a rapair install

 

[Diademed]

Yeah, I ended up reinstalling.

I entered the drivers, that's the only way you can get into the Recovery console with the sata array installation.

However, there never was an option for a repair install. I've done it before with installs on PATA drives, but it never seems to come up as an option on a SATA drive.