Error message help

[shamrock_uk]

Windows doesn't play nice at installing and can only be installed to the first partition on your primary master hard drive.

The only way to get it installed to a different drive is either to swap them round physically in the machine as Bungleau suggests (but then install to C or unplug the first one whilst you install and then cheat it during bootup with a decent bootloader.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

So, if it's possible, I should be able to then retrieve my data from the former primary drive and then format it or just delete everything?

If I physically switch the drives, will cmos automatically pick this up?

[Nightwing]

is it possible to do a soft restore? go back to a date it worked fine and in doing a soft restore you won't loose saved files or email list or emails. I don't know if you can get there from here but if you call microsoft thier tech department may be able to walk you through it. We have done that twice and it all worked fine.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Originally posted by Nightwing: is it possible to do a soft restore? go back to a date it worked fine and in doing a soft restore you won't loose saved files or email list or emails. I don't know if you can get there from here but if you call microsoft thier tech department may be able to walk you through it. We have done that twice and it all worked fine.

I probably won't be able to do that since I can't get to my windows screen anymore. I may have some problem on the disk as well. I think I'm going to pick up Norton system works, since it's on sale. I should really have some antivirus software. I just don't like it too much 'cos it slows everything down.

[Bungleau]

Originally posted by Variol (Farseer) Elmwood: So, if it's possible, I should be able to then retrieve my data from the former primary drive and then format it or just delete everything? If I physically switch the drives, will cmos automatically pick this up?

Short answer: yes.

*edit* with a caveat: a drive can be flagged as a master or a slave drive. You may also need to switch the jumpers.

[ 05-24-2006, 03:09 PM: Message edited by: Bungleau ]

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

So, in simple english, I can switch the cable to make the slave the master?

There is one other hitch though. My secong drive is a serial drive, not IDE. Can I change this in the CMOS?

So far, no luck. I've put the Maxblast 4 cd for the drive in but now it won't boot to the windows cd. It gives me some type of NSTDR error or something.

[ 05-25-2006, 06:41 AM: Message edited by: Variol (Farseer) Elmwood ]

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Any way I can get the Serial drive to be recognized?

[shamrock_uk]

Sorry, not having any SATA drives myself I'm going off speculation, but do you have a RAID controller built in to your motherboard? I believe they often handle certain hard drive slots.

After the "press delete to enter setup" message, you might get something like "press F8 to enter RAID setup" or something where your SATA drives could be set as the boot device - pretty sure thats what my last computer did.


The other reason you may be having problems is that Windows may need a driver to install to a SATA drive as it's getting quite old. No idea if this is the case though.

You will have problems installing Windows to any drive larger than 137GB however due to this bug which is something to keep in mind also.

It's really hard to know without being there what the problem is. Sorry the above are very vague points, but no doubt someone more knowledgeable will clarify.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

I'm trying to find a site where I can create an anti virus boot CD. I just got the free trial version of Norton anti virus but there's no option to create a CD.

I did put the driver for the SATA drive and and I think it did something. Where would it put the info though, on it's own drive?

[shamrock_uk]

No, you would have the driver on a cd/pendrive/floppy and press a key immediately after booting from the Windows CD - I think it says "press F2 to load third party drivers/utilities" or something similar.

The Live CD's I linked to earlier have a virus scanner for using on Windows systems.

If you're this much at sea though and you have things backed up, I'd be tempted to just reinstall Windows (without formatting) as it's not entirely impossible this is just a Windows glitch and not a virus. It's probably going to be the easiest course.

A reinstall will ensure that no viral code is executing on startup at least, then you can install a virus checker afterwards and go hunting.