Help me bring back an old XP installation...

[Johnnydillinger]

Yo, it's me with my infernal machine again. This time I've got a new motherboard, a pretty sweat one for what it is actually, some RAM and a new CPU (only sligtly better than the old). Thing is, when I wanted to re-vitalize my old XP installation, it said something like its partition is not Windows-compatible (this happened in the XP installer thingy with the blue-white screen). Which raises the superb question of how the cow-mongering fuck did I manage to install one on it anyway... but that's not the problem.

 

See, I installed a new XP on an old HD; one o fthose which give out clicking sounds and die from time to time, and I'd love to try to make that other XP bootable, but I don't even have the slightest idea of how to put it in the boot sequence. Any clues on where should I start?

 

I know I'll have some problems with the chipset, as it still has the drivers for my old MBs chipset and all, but that is something fixable in safe mode. Still, if you think it's impossible to bring that fucker back to life, just tell me.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[Atlas]

Should just be able to bring the other HD up in the boot disk selection menu in BIOS. If you're trying to run it in conjunction with the other HD make sure the master/slave jumpers are set correctly. Windows will pitch a fit if it doesn't have the first partition on the first drive.

 

 

As far as the problem with the first HD...If the sectors that XP requires for a boot sector are damaged or unwriteable, windows will again throw a fit. You may be able to fix the problem in CHKDSK. That's about all I can think of. It's been a long time since I farted around with XP.

[Johnnydillinger]

Thanks for the help!

 

I'll see about the boot priority thing again, though it didn't work because even though the NTLDR is on that disk, it always used the one on another that's been formatted since. When I try to go into the repair console on the install disk's blue-white thingy, it just says something like it's not an XP-compatible partition. Ehh, maybe I'll just manually copy all the saves from it to this new one and make a new partition, with a new system installed. Or maybe I'll just leave this system running, I'm not sure about bad sectors anyway. It's a contact issue with the power cables inside; that might be the one damaging my files when those HDs restart constantly. In addition, a more tech-savvy friend informed me that my 350W Mercury PSU is a notorious machine destroyer and I should get rid of it as soon as possible. He might be onto something, it starts up with a sound reminiscent of a fucking chainsaw...