Hello everyone, could really do with some help. I have 2 hard drives on my m/c, they are both set active. 2 weeks ago, I attempted to install Suse Linux 10.1 to my first hard drive, it went horribly wrong, I ended up formatting the drive. Prior to this attempt, when my m/c started up, I was given the option of being able to boot into either of the drives with no problems. Since the format, only one drive boots up. When I open up "my computer" the 2nd h/d is shown as "D" it is shown as healthy on diskmgmt. But I cannot boot into it. Could someone please tell me how I can overcome this problem, as a lot of my daughter's work is on the 2nd hard drive, and she is giving me a hard time. Any help very gratefully received. I have tried altering the bios so that I attempt to boot into the 2nd hard drive, I just keep getting NTLDR, what does this mean? Thanks again. chrissyboy

Your comments are confusing. You say you attempted to install an OS on Drive 1 (assuming C:) but it failed so you formatted. Did you already have an OS on Drive 2 (D?). "One drive boots up". Would that be Drive 1 that now has a new OS on it? I'm assuming so since you can see D in Disk Management. What happens when you go into My Computer and look at the contents of D? If you can see your D drive in My Computer, you don't need to boot to it to access any data. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

sorry if my request was confusing. Hope this clears up any mis-understandings. I had Windows XP Pro installed on both h/d. My first h/d was 120 gig, so i partitioned it to install(?) suse 10.1. Prior to this both h/d could be accessed, internet access was on both of them. Now I can't get hard drive 2 (D) to boot, that is the problem, so my daughter is using my h/d. That is the problem, she needs to access the drive herself, but I can't boot into it. chrissyboy

When you formatted the first drive to install Linux you also deleted the boot files for *both* installations of Windows XP. First you may need to go into BIOS And make the second hard disk bootable. Then boot with your Windows XP CD and going into the repair console. Once there type fixmbr and fixboot. That should get the second drive booting. Failing that you will probably have to do a repair install Windows XP on both drives again. Having said that there is no reason at all why you should have two installations of the same OS on the same system, even if two different people are using the system. Windows XP has facilities to separate two users, even more so with Windows XP Professional. Is stated above, if the files on drive D: are accesable thers is no reason why you should install anther copy of Windows XP. Just configure the one your have correctly. Stuart

Since you have already re-installed XP on your C drive,and you also have XP on the D drive, both versions of the operating system use the same bootfiles which are located on the root of your C drive. The only thing you need to do to restore the dualboot is re-write your boot.ini file to include the necessary references to each operating system. do some searching under the heading "Boot.ini" and you should find enough info to help you solve this relatively minor problem. You do not need to do any repair instals. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.