Booting from wrong Hard Drive

Setup:
Western Digital 36.6 GB Raptor (x2 Raid 0) - Primary (Windows XP)
Western Digital 200 GB Sata HD - (Data Drive)
Maxtor IDE 80 GB - (data Drive)

I used to have Windows Vista installed on the 200gb drive, but formatted it through windows XP. Somehow, my computer is still booting from the 200gb drive, before the bootup process I see a message in text from Vista that There is a problem with windows. No kidding? I formatted the drive. Can anyone help me clear vista completely off of this drive, and get my Raptors back to the default primary drives?

Thanks for any thoughts/help!

Ian

 

Instead of formatting, I'd try wiping out the partition, since it sounds like you still have the vista boot record on their.

Also, did you use full format, or quick format?

 

First, if your pc can boot from more than the primary hard drive, make sure the Bios is set to boot from the correct hard drive.

Otherwise it sounds like Vista modified the boot record.

Reboot using the XP install disk.
When it asks what kind of run you want to do, enter "R" (without the quotes); You will end up at a C: prompt.
two of the commands available are "fixmbr" and "fixboot"
(type in help to see complete list of commands available);
Enter

or

to read about them. You probably need to run "fixboot"

 

Never mind, the above is correct

 

okay, so i found out that for whatever reason vista installed some boot sector on my IDE hard drive, I have no idea why. Anyways, I'm formatting that drive now, which I am pretty sure should solve my problem. However: My DVD-ROM drives won't open... ??? There is power to them, the IDE cable hasn't been touched, but is also secure. The BIOS reads both of the drives. Why won't pressing the eject button open my drives!?

 

Unplug everything but the dvdrom drives...Or better yet, have only one dvd rom drive connected to the motherboard. Does it eject now?

Most dvdrom drives come with a small tool, that you can insert into a small hole on the drive itself. Try ejecting the drive, with this tool, and reboot. The system should close the drive automatically, can you eject normally now?

If so, try connecting your drives back up, and see if your issues still come about.

 

I got it... I removed everything but the drives, booted, and went into the BIOS. The ejected when I had the BIOS up. So, I re-booted with everything plugged in, and their working fine. Strange problem, haha. Anyways, I got the default boot Hard Drive problem sorted out, as well as my short-lived DVD-ROM problem figured out. Once again a success story on MajorGeeks. Thanks everyone!

 

Excellent! I'm glad we could all help yet out!