Boot to hard drive... HELP!

Since my other 'puter got fried, I got a new motherboard, memory, graphics card and upgraded to XP. To begin w/ I didn't load windows onto both drives so I could at least backup the stuff from the second drive onto cds. I assumed that the two os's were conflicting and that's why xp wouldn't load from the hard drive. I have since wiped both drives clean and reloaded xp and it still won't boot from the hard drive. I went into recovery console and ran fixbrm & fixboot- NOTHING! I'm at my whits end w/ trying to fix the problem and am hoping ya'll can help.

 

Have you checked the BIOS to see if the hard drive is set to boot first?

What messages do you get on screen?

 

For the most part I am loading from the cd.

I have since been able to load from the hard drive on occasion.
When I can't, I get these messages:

Error loading OS

Can't load because can't find: <windows32>ntoskrnl.exe

This measage: The system has recovered from a serious error.~ Technical information about error report:

C:\DOCUME~1\diana\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERb8d7.dir00\Mini 042706-01.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\diana\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERb8d7.dir00\sysd ata.xml

 

Do you need Windows on both drives? If Windows is loaded on one drive you will be able to access both drives.

Have you checked out this link?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477/EN-US/

If that doesn't help I would do the following if you haven't already:

1. Check the jumper settings on the back of each hard drive.

2. Check all connectors are firmly attached to HD / motherboard and try booting up now.

3. Disconnect the slave hard drive and try booting with only the master hard drive connected.

4. Download a diagnostic utility from your hard drive manufacturer's website and test your hard drives. Note some tests reformat the drive so you will need to reinstall XP again. At least you will know that your hard drive is not bad.

5. Reinstall Windows XP to your master hard drive.