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General discussion

boot configuration

Jan 23, 2004 11:20AM PST

I can no longer boot from both my hard drives. The first error message said: Intel Boot Agent: no boot filename received. I disabled the IBA in my BIOS. Now when I try to boot the message says:cannot read from drive due to hardware configuration problem. I tried changing disc order and boot device order in BIOS. I also tried disconnecting all drives except for the one I want,still no luck. The BIOS does not list the hard drive I want in boot device order, but it does list it in hard disc drives, and Windows says both drives are healthy. Any suggestions? I am on a new Gateway with XP Pro, my hard drives are from Maxtor. I also have a CD drive and floppy. My motherboard is from Intel. I also tried upgrading my BIOS from the Gateway site. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Re:boot configuration
Jan 23, 2004 11:48AM PST

1. "The first error message said: Intel Boot Agent: no boot filename received."

This is typical for many Intel Ethernet cards. It is not the cause of your main issue.

2. "I disabled the IBA in my BIOS. Now when I try to boot the message says:cannot read from drive due to hardware configuration problem. I tried changing disc order and boot device order in BIOS. I also tried disconnecting all drives except for the one I want,still no luck. The BIOS does not list the hard drive I want in boot device order, but it does list it in hard disc drives, and Windows says both drives are healthy. Any suggestions?"

At this point I am a bit confused. If Windows is booting, then all is right in the world and what the issue may be is that you have moved a hard disk from another machine and the contents are not readable or the contents have become "scrambled." A longer history (story) could be helpful.

3. "I am on a new Gateway with XP Pro, my hard drives are from Maxtor. I also have a CD drive and floppy. My motherboard is from Intel. I also tried upgrading my BIOS from the Gateway site. Thanks."

I'm seeing a picture of where hard disks are being swapped around and you've lost a boot record somewhere. No mention of what OS may have been on the drives, but so far, all I see is a learning experience about moving drives and how data loss will occur.

Bob

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Re:Re:boot configuration
Jan 23, 2004 12:23PM PST

Thanks for responding. Here is the order in which things occured. First I installed the new drive, it worked fine. After about a month, I erased,formatted and upgraded my OS on my old drive. After doing that I can no longer boot to my new drive. The very first error message that appeared immediately after doing this was "NTLDR missing". Can you recommend a tutorial on boot records as I am not familiar with the term. The original OS on my box was XP Home, I then bought the new drive and installed Pro on it. After a month I upgraded my original drive to Pro also. Both drives have been in this box the entire time, however, I have tried using Maxtor's drive-to-drive copier, it did'nt work well and that is when I formatted and started over.

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XP Boot management.
Jan 23, 2004 12:50PM PST

Take a moment and put these phrases into http://www.google.com to learn about XP's Recovery Console and fixing boot issues.

XP FIXBOOT

But I wonder about that LBA change in the BIOS. If I do this, the drive that had data may become scrambled on the very next boot as the drive geometry has been altered. Booting an OS like NT, 2000, XP (most Windows) will write to said drive and since the geometry changed, writes to such a drive may really scramble the contents. Please excuse me as I ask why you would make this change?

Bob

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Re:XP Boot management.
Jan 23, 2004 1:06PM PST

Thanks for the link, I will study the contents. The IBA change in BIOS refers to the Intel Boot Agent pre-installed on my box. From what I have learned it is a tool that the computer reads as a drive that can be used to remote boot a machine. I assume it was installed so the Gateway techs can help people like me. I disabled it in BIOS because no matter the configuration I came up with, this little tool tried to boot, and I thought it was preventing my other drives from being read first. Either way, the IBA makes no difference on my ability to boot to the drive I want, I have enabled and disabled it and tried to boot both ways.

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IBA vs. LBA
Jan 23, 2004 10:56PM PST

Sorry, but lba and Iba are just some pixels about on the screen, much like the 0 and O characters. That's a zero (0) and a letter 'O'.

Changing the Intel boot setting is as you and I know, not the issue.

Can I ask in the future you take care with the acronyms since it can lead many astray. This one is just too close to LBA (Large Block Addressing) which is a hard disk addressing method which can cause data loss if played with.

Bob

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Re:IBA vs. LBA
Jan 24, 2004 2:19AM PST

Thanks for the advice, I will be more careful in the future. I think I figured out that somehow I am using one drive to boot from and using the other drive's system resources, which is why I need both drives to boot up and no matter the configuration, it always boots to the same drive. Basically, I am using the drives in conjunction. In disc management, it lists one drive as Healthy(boot) and the other drive as Healthy(system). I believe the second drive should read: Healthy(active). Any ideas on how I can make both drives able to boot independently of each other?

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Re:Re:IBA vs. LBA
Jan 24, 2004 2:37AM PST

"Any ideas on how I can make both drives able to boot independently of each other?"

Please excuse me as I can't "get the picture" yet. In you are NOT swapping drives around, it is possible to install various OSes and use a BOOT MANAGER. Some BIOS's offer a boot to some drive and this is PANS or Pretty Amazing New Stuff that you won't find a lot of support for. Great for booting a CD and not having to change the BIOS for that. But booting a hard disk may be problematic.

OK. We've covered some ground to this point, but with the picture still being fuzzy, I can share that XP (and all the Windows OSes) do not survive movement from Slave to Master, channels and vice-versa. When I find a dual-boot setup and XP is on the slave drive, there is NO SUPPORTED METHOD to move the drive to the primary boot position and "FIX" it so that it operates properly.

There are some web pages about this, but in about 1/2 the attempts (or higher) I know about the drive contents just vanish and a full install is performed.

Write a bit more?

Bob

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