No boot device error when uninstalling HD

[tyler2time]

Ok so last week I had a fatal error with my windows xp and couldnt boot into it at all. I tried repair install and that didnt work so my only option was a reinstall, but I didnt want to lose all my files. So my great idea was to take an extremely old 8gig hard drive i had laying around intsall xp on it get all my files onto dvds then reinstall windows xp on original hard drive. So I did then I partitioned it and installed windows7 on the second partition. My mistake I think was not uninstalling the old 8 gig drive before i did all this.

My regular hard drive is a SATA hard drive. My old 8gig is IDE and I have my dvdrom drive slaved to it. ever since I did the reinstall my dvdrom has been acting weird so i went to uninstall the hard drive. but now i get a no boot device error on start up. I changed my boot order and removed the IDE from it in the BIOS. But still didnt work. I'm guessing through stupidity I somehow made my old 8gig the boot device. Is there anyway I can make my regular hard drive the boot device. And if so, since I got 2 OSs how can I make sure that it will give the option on which OS i want to run. Thank you for any input.

 

[evongugg]

Switching my Windows 7 Boot Disk from D to C with BCDBoot rather than BCDEdit

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=54ce4de2-2920-4904-bfaf-b8f3ab7737b8

 

[evongugg]

Also use a third party boot manager to select between XP and Win 7.

 

[evongugg]

Check the jumpers on the IDE drives.

 

[Paperdoc]

You had a SATA drive you were booting from into Win XP, but it developed a fatal error so you could not boot from it. So you installed an old 8 GB HDD as Master on the IDE port, set the DVD drive to Slave on the same port, and installed Win XP fresh on the 8 GB drive. So far, so good, and that should have been working. I assume you had your Boot Priority set to boot from the IDE HDD (maybe second after the DVD drive on the IDE port).

Then you decided the DVD drive was behaving strangely and hence removed the 8 GB drive. I'm kind of assuming you re-jumpered the DVD drive to become a Master again. Now you find there is no boot device, even when you tell it NOT to look for the 8 GB IDE device you removed. Well, what boot device is it supposed to use? You had a SATA device that did not work - are you trying to boot from it again?

 

[tyler2time]

Ok thanks for the input. I just reinstalled both since they were just installed last week and didnt have a whole lot to lose, this time without the 8 gig installed ofcourse.

You had a SATA drive you were booting from into Win XP, but it developed a fatal error so you could not boot from it. So you installed an old 8 GB HDD as Master on the IDE port, set the DVD drive to Slave on the same port, and installed Win XP fresh on the 8 GB drive. So far, so good, and that should have been working. I assume you had your Boot Priority set to boot from the IDE HDD (maybe second after the DVD drive on the IDE port).

Then you decided the DVD drive was behaving strangely and hence removed the 8 GB drive. I'm kind of assuming you re-jumpered the DVD drive to become a Master again. Now you find there is no boot device, even when you tell it NOT to look for the 8 GB IDE device you removed. Well, what boot device is it supposed to use? You had a SATA device that did not work - are you trying to boot from it again?

I dont think the SATA device failed. After i installed xp on the 8gig i tested it and everything seemed fine. And I know, I am an idiot. I thought when I installed XP and win7 on the SATA hdd that it would make that hdd the boot device for those 2 OSs.

 

[Paperdoc]

Doing the installation of OS software to a hard drive does not automatically set up which hardware device the machine will boot from. That must be set separately by you. You must go into the BIOS Setup screens at boot time and find the place where the Boot Sequence is specified, and tell it which HDD device it should use. Save these settings and Exit.

If you have two Windows versions installed on that one HDD device, and did it in the proper sequence (I'm pretty sure you had to install the older version first, and the Win 7 last), Windows should be offering you a boot menu to ask which version you want to use this time.

 

[tyler2time]

Doing the installation of OS software to a hard drive does not automatically set up which hardware device the machine will boot from. That must be set separately by you. You must go into the BIOS Setup screens at boot time and find the place where the Boot Sequence is specified, and tell it which HDD device it should use. Save these settings and Exit.

If you have two Windows versions installed on that one HDD device, and did it in the proper sequence (I'm pretty sure you had to install the older version first, and the Win 7 last), Windows should be offering you a boot menu to ask which version you want to use this time.

I know how to change boot sequences, that wasnt the problem. It was using the IDE hard drive to boot the windows on the SATA hard drive. The boot manager was installed onto the old IDE drive.