pugwash Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Computer at home is shagged (metaphorically of course), computer at works fine. BUT, i managed to install XP onto the E drive at work whereas my comptuer at home is installed as the C drive. I need to get info from home computer to work computer so want to plug HDD from home PC into work PC. How do i force my work PC to boot from the correct OS? i knwe how to do it with DOS and 95 but can't work it out on XP. Any help much appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 In the BIOS settings it will have a list of what to boot from in what order, usually something like: Floppy-0 CD-ROM0 IDE-0 IDE-1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Humphreys Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 If the works PC is less than 3 years old, just install it as a slave drive on the 2nd ide and it will still boot from the mail drive. Pail Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smo Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Set the "home hdd" as a slave and in the bios, as fridge said tell it to boot from IDE-0, presuming the work hdd is ide-0. If you find it boots to the wrong drive then change the boot order in the bios and itll boot into the other drive, then copy stuff off One thing though - why would you want XP on an E drive....itll make it seriously confusing/messy forever and ever with ti not being C! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 the problem is that all the HDD are SATA which means you don't set slave/master priority on them anymore- also the BIOS does not allow you to select the HDD boot order- it just allows you to select the boot device type (from a choice of HHD - not hdd 0, HDD 1, HDD 2 etc; CD ROM, RAID, removeable, LAN, and a couple of others that i can't remember) i installed XP on E by accident after i selected the wrong partition (as it is only 1 physical drive) by accident and i couldn't be bothered to change it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark90 Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Dip it in batter and give it 3 minutes or so in the deep fat fryer and that should sort it Go lovely with some nice micro chips Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 I think XP gives you a delay (usually <1sec but you can change it somewhere...) to press F8 to choose boot drives. After that I know nuffink, and my system drive is F: for no good reason (tried persuading it to be C: but it's just not having it, f***ing Microsoft ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Humphreys Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 If both are SATA then just plug it in and the PC will still boot from C:. Paul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 yeah but it needs to boot from E NOT from C, therein lies the problem Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smo Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 yeah but it needs to boot from E NOT from C, therein lies the problem As said above, simply select the boot device from the menu and itll boot from the correct drive. If the problem lie with 2 OS's being on 1 drive you need to write a boot batch file to give you a menu at startup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 As said above, simply select the boot device from the menu and itll boot from the correct drive. BIOS won't let me. can't select the HDD number or type, just that it boots from HDD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LR90 Posted January 22, 2007 Share Posted January 22, 2007 Jim, plug them both in. Whichever one boots take a look in the root dir of the booted sector for a file bootsect,ini (system, readonly text file) or some such (sorry I'm not on xp right now) and also not what drive letter it thinks the other copy of xp is on. You will see an entry for the booted os (XP), just copy this line and alter the drive letter. Now reboot and at the prompt select the drive you wish to boot from. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pugwash Posted January 22, 2007 Author Share Posted January 22, 2007 cheers trev- i was half way through that but you've just saved me a ton of work all fixed now- just transferring the files across. thanks for all the replies guys Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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