XP Crash & reinstall

[Mike37]

Recently my XP OS crashed. That is, I received a "nonsystem disk" error message on a blank, black screen. No disks were in either my floppy drive, Zip drive or CD drive. I had to reinstall XP.
When XP was installing, it evidently did not recognize itself and since there was no other Windows OS on the disk, it asked for my Win98 CD. After inserting my Win98 CD in the drive, XP install fine. However, two problems resulted. First, XP reassigned drive letters to my two hard disks: C drive (Drive 0 in CMOS) was changed to D, my previous drive D (drive 1 in CMOS) was changed to C. In addition, since XP faild to see itself or any other previous Win OS on the drive, it installed itself with a clean registry. So, all the programs on my hard disk are not recorded in the start menu! At this juncture, I have decided that my only recourse is to clean the drive and reinstall XP on a clean drive. The problem is that I want to change my drive letters back to their previous designations. My main hard drive (drive 0), now designated D is a 13 GB drive. My other drive (drive 1) is only a 6 GB drive. How do I do this? I have tried to change the letter designations already using the "Computer Management" Disk Management tool but the system refuses to change the drive letter designations; saying something like "Windows can't change these drive designations." Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

[beeboy]

I dont know if its worth the hassle. You could change the drive letters with Partition Magic but you would have to rewrite the boot info as well. Otherwise you would boot into nothing land. You can do a google search on "repair xp". There is step by step instuctions for rewriting the boot sector. Maybe someone will have a simpler answer for you but my experience with changing drive letters was bad very bad. Here is more info.
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Oper..._20373714.html

[Terry Zaperach]

If you do a fresh install...wiping everything clean, your computer will automatically reassign the drive letters. Make sure you have no periphreals connected. Connect them one at a time and let your computer find and install the drivers for each. Reboot your computer after you install each card and each periphreal. Don't install everything and then do a reboot. If your computer asked for you WIN98 CD, it must have needed a driver(s). All of the necessary drivers should have already been on the XP OS disk. Sounds to me like too much confusion is taking place and your CPU can't straightened things out.

Just curious...what was the last thing you did just before you got the system disk error?

[Mike37]

Thanks beeboy and Terry for your suggestions. Terry, I think your suggestion is what I will try first. To answer your question re ". . . what was the last thing you did just before you got the disk error," I'll resond this way: First, the last thing I did was to simply read my email. Second, I suspect the problem resides with the fact that just a day before the problem, I had DirecWay install a two-way satallite system . . . after twenty years, I am OD on dial up internet access. I suspect that, for some reason, the DirecWay software caused the crash. Of course, I can't be certain. Anyway, that is the only "New" activity occuring on my computer so it is a good bet that something involved with the DirecWay installation blew out the OS.

OK I plan to go ahead with your reinstall suggestion but first, a questions about your recommendation: What exactly do you mean by doing a "fresh install?" Do you mean clean the disk of all programs by reformating or are you simply suggesting a reinstall of the XP OS without formating the disk? Your suggestion to remove all peripherals is good. Too bad I didn't think of that during my first XP reinstall. First, could be, as you suggest, that XP was looking for a driver last time when it asked for the Win98 disk. On that point, if XP does not have to look for a driver when it reinstalls, should it then find all the programs on the disk and install them in the Startup menu (this assums that I dont reformat the disk)? Second, If no periferals are connected, will the reinstall of XP change my drive letters back? I am worried about this because many programs automatically install on drive C. I don't plan to reformat my second drive (i.e., the one that was previously D and is now C drive). However, it was the boot drive in my previous computer and has the old windows 95 system files in the boot sector (I think boot sector is the way to describe it). Anyway, currently, even though my large drive is now designated as D, it is still the boot drive for my system. I'll stop now; I don't want to confuse the issue by bringing in a lot of extranious information.

Looking for an answer to the above soon as I plan to do the reinstall today. Again, thanks for the help
Mike37

[Terry Zaperach]

Sorry for the long delay in responding. I've been out of town for a week.

What I meant by a fresh install is to completely blow away your old OS. Reformat... your hard drive. If you attempt to reinstall, you are not erasing the files(s) that are causing your problem. XP should have all of the drivers it needs from it's own cab files.

I am not sure how XP will react to two drives having its own OS. I get the impression that the CPU is seeing two root directories and can't decide which one is which and it's being confused when it attempts to associate one program with a particular OS. Hey, while I am thinking of it, do you have one of the drives' jumpers set to master and the other set to slave? If not, you need to do that.

The main thing at this point is to erase your registry which means a complete reformat of the hard drive. Start clean and after you install each program or device, such as a printer, etc., reboot! By rebooting after adding a program or device you can see if "it" is compatible. Makes for much easier troubleshooting!

Good luck and let me know if you get it working and what you did to solve the problem.

[Mike37]

Terry,

Thanks for the reply. I have decided that the thing to do is reformat my HDD. I do have some problems however. Here they are:
1. Since my drive letters were switched when I did the XP reinstall previously, I decided to unhook the second drive and reboot to see if my boot drive letter would switch back to C. The answer is NO!. Now, I have one HDD on the system designated D: Here is how the drives were set up: The 13GB boot drive was the original drive in my Dell. It is jumpered as the master drive. The second drive in the system is jumpered as the slave drive. The boot drive was originally C: drive. When I installed the second HDD as a slave backup drive it was designated D: Formerly, it was my boot disk in my previous computer and has Win98 on it so it has a system (partition?) on it and was the boot drive on the previous computer. It has a great number of important files on it so I did not reformat it when I installed it as the slave drive in my current computer.

2. So, now I am wondering how to get the drive letter on my current computer (the only one connected now as I disconnected the slave drive) from D: to C:? Can't figure a way to do this.
I am worried that even if I reformat the drive, it will remain D: drive. Anyone out there know FOR CERTAIN about this?

3. I want to reformat my boot HDD but I can't find any "Format" command on my XP upgrade CD. Is there Format procedure on the CD? For instance, if I reboot using the XP CD, will it offer to let me reformat my HDD? And will it see the HDD as D: or will it change the drive designation back to C: after the reformat? I really need to know UNEQUIVICALLY about this.

4. If there is no reformat capability on the XP CD, can I use the Microsoft Boot Disk from my Win98 (I have this disk still in its original plastic wrap as I have never used it)?

5. Finally, should I reformat the HDD using the new XP file format NTFS? According to the XP manual, one should use FAT32 if the hard disk is smaller than 32GB. Mine is only 13GB. Also, I have many backup files from my previous Win98 FAT32 setup that I need. I understand that NTFS can't read files made with FAT32. Any suggestions here will be appreciated.

Well, that is about it. I really want to get going with this reformat business but haven't yet convinced myself that things are ready (in my alleged mind, at least) yet.

Thanks again everyone for the help.
Mike 37

[Terry Zaperach]

Here is what I would do.

1. Copy all of the critical files from the drive you have designated as the slave to either a CD or some other type of back up even if you have to attach them to an email and send them to yourself. Whatever it takes to get them copied and protected it's better to be safe than sorry.

2. Remove the CD-ROM from your computer.

3. Format the old drive which will wipe the drive clean and blow away the partitions.

4. Re-install the CD-ROM. This will make your primary drive, drive C, the slave drive will become drive D and the CD-ROM will become drive E.

You won't find any boot files on an upgrade CD. It's meant to change and add files rather than to do a fresh install. You need to get the full XP program which will probably solve a lot of your problems and frustrations.

I can't say for sure if using the FAT 32 will hurt. I'd check with Microsoft unless someone on this site has some experience. I'll check on the compatibility on the two file formats to see what is recommended and then post my findings.

In the meantime, you have a lot of prep work to do before you go for the gold.

[Mike37]

Terry,

I don't get it, why remove the CD Rom drive? Look, I have two HDD drives; the master and slave: C & D drives (these two drives are the ones that have their drive letters switched. In addition to the hard drives, I have a floppy (drive A & B), a ZIP drive E: and a DVD drive F: None of the drive letters for these drives have changed. So, why unhook the CD (DVD) dirve? I will need it to boot XT anyway.

If the XP CD does not offer the opportunity to reformat the hard drive, why can't I use the Mocrosoft Win98 boot disk . . . I t has FDISK on it?

Or, what about using Partition Magic to Format the HDD and to remove the system partition on my slave drive?

Let me know what you think.
Mike37

[Bman]

You can do a clean install from an 'upgrade' cd. You will be asked to insert the disk of your previous OS (ie. win98, win2k, etc) to prove you are entitled to an upgrade. You will then be given the choice to upgrade your old OS, or to do a 'clean' install. You can also have winXP format your HD.
Back to your original problem... the disk error you received may be caused by your hard drive failing. When you installed XP the second time, your 'D' drive became your boot drive, even though XP is still on the 'C' drive. That's why you have a fresh registry. IMHO... buy a new hard drive and start over. I would not risk using the old drive.

B

[Tink]

Here is another option. Before you do anything, go to computer management then disk management and change your drive letters to what you know they should be (if both have boot capability this should not be a problem). Then you can have your original 13g "D-slave" drive back to what it was, somewhere to put everything.

Then you can reinstall xp on the "c-master" drive and it should be back to it's original state (you of course would have to reinstall any programs on either drive as the system files would be gone), but this is how I've done it in the past and had no problems.

Let us know what you finally come up with, k?

[Mike37]

Tink & Bman,

Thanks guys for the suggestions. First, Bman I may not have made myself clear on the drive letter switch. When I reinstalled XP, it put itself on the original boot drive, the large drive, however, it changed the drive letter from C: to D:. So, XP is loaded on the same drive as before but it now is designated D: drive! C: drive is now the slave drive (formerly D but XP is not loaded on this drive. I just can't figure out why the drive letter change and haven't been able to change the drive letters back.

Tink, I have already tried to change the drive letters back to their original designations using Computer management, Disk Management, Action, All tasks, Change drive letters & paths. While it looks like one can do this, trying to gives the following message: "Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system vloume or boot volume." Evidently, the only drive letters that can be changed are extended volumes beyond the boot volume and system volume. It flat won't do it!!!

So, now after taking in all of your advice, I am going to do the following:

1. I have disconnected my slave drive (now designated C so the only HDD functioning is the master drive (now still designated D

2. I have gone into the BIOS and changed the order of the boot device to boot first from the CD then from the HDD.

3. Next, I will shut down the computer, insert the XP CD in my CD drive and boot up. I will use the XP CD to reformat my drive and reinstall XP. In the process, I hope that the drive letter designation will change back to C:

4: Obviously, I will be reinstalling all of my programs on the newly reformatted HDD. Again, hopfully the drive letter designation will automatically be changed back to C: since it is the only drive on the system.

5 If all of this goes OK, I will hook up my slave drive, copy the important data files back to the newly formatted drive and then reformat the slave drive. Then copy the data back to the slave drive so that I have extra copies of the data. I will first copy most of the absolutly necessary data files to ZIP disks. I wish I had a writable CD to use but I don't.

So, what do you think about this plan, guys?

Regards,
Mike37

[onesickpuppy]

I guess I'll throw in my 2 cents here, and hopefully save some time and energy for you.

There is so much here to rediscuss, so I will start basically fresh and hope you can see through it all.

First, when you went to reinstall XP, the reason for asking for your 98 disk is that your using a Upgrade CD (correct??). If it was a full version, this would have never happened.

During the reinstall.........XP detected that you already had a OS and by default will attempt to load to a different drive so that the old system files are not destroyed, unless you choose to do a fresh install. Since you chose not, it in turn established the files on the other drive and reassigned itself because it wants to be the primary system now. This is also what created the mixup with drive letters.

TRUELY the way to resolve your issues is to do a fresh install, and this can be done with a Upgrade CD.

****NOTE*****
One of the reasons your having problems is that JUST formating doesn't take away the master boot files, or change the partitions.

What I have found over the years is to follow these steps to provide for error free reinstalls.

First, type "fdisk/mbr" This wipes clean your master boot record. This will eliminate any "ghosting" of previous OS settings. (Trust me when i say you can still detect other settings if you don't)

Then type "fdisk". Delete your partitions. If you have multiple partions, you have to delete the extended ones first, or you'll be fighting yourself in getting it done. Once you have deleted your partions, recreate them. By doing this, you reestablish proper partion data. Then you format. Even with a 13 gig drive, I would recommend the NTFS format. It runs smoother for XP, and more security. I run NTFS even on a 8 gig drive that i have.

With the above steps, you will establish a pure and solid platform for any OS to work off of. IF not, then you can expect problems with ghost files, and associations.

Boot off your Upgrade CD, and when it asks for your 98 disk, put it in, wait for it to detect, and it will ask for the XP disk again. From here you will complete a "fresh" install properly.

Once you have XP up and running, you can proceed to reinstall your programs.

As far as removing the other drive, its not necessary. The fresh install will reconize it as the "D" drive.

Saving your important files is standard "computing"........so once you have them moved, you can format the slave drive. I would recommend still doing the above steps since it was the primary drive previously. This will give you a clean and solid slave drive for storing your files.

If you need any more help, you can email me at the following, and I'll be glad to assist in any way I can.

freighthog@attbi.com

[Tink]

Mike, what you plan to do sounds like the absolute best option. It's ALWAYS a good idea to start frest when you are having such problems.

[beeboy]

That is a great post onesickpuppy. Easy to understand and right on the money.