Windows XP/Hard Drive new install problems

After some hardware switching, I ended up with a 10GB and 160GB hard drive in my Desktop. Originally the 10GB was going to be a temporary drive and the 160GB drive would have a partition with Windows and a partition for everything else.

However, I couldn't ever get Windows installed right on the 160GB drive and just left the 10GB there. It's been about 6 months and the 10GB drive is out of space and I would really like to get it out of there.

So I backed the 160GB drive onto DVDs, partitioned it out, and installed Windows XP on the smaller partition. When I boot the computer, I end up with 2 Windows prompts, one will take me to the 10GB Windows XP and one will take me to the 160GB Windows XP.

However, when I take the 10GB HD out and set the 160GB as the master (the only HD set up at that point), Windows does not boot and instead I get a message that says there is an invalid boot disk in the A: drive.

I played around with the boot settings on the 160GB drive to put the A: drive last, but it did not fix the problems.

Any ideas on what to try in this situation? Please note that the Windows install disk is from Dell if that impacts anything.

 

What is the make and model of your machine?

 

you coul resize the partition with a tool like gpart'd partition magic or something else

 

I think the problem is that during setup, Windows put a few critical startup files on the 10GB drive. Removing the 10gb drive and setting the 160gb drive as Master and doing a fresh install of XP will solve the problem. [What was the problem installing Windows with just the 160gb drive installed? Were your jumpers set correctly at that time?]

There may be a way of copying the needed files from the 10gb drive to the XP partition on the 160gb drive but I am unsure which ones are critical nor whether Windows would find them.

 

Good call Sach...