ive got a new hard drvie and i copied the files from the old one to the new one but when i try to start the new one by itself the bios say cant find windows configuration file...missing or corrupted, is there something i need to do to get that file? or is there something i didnt transfer to it? thx
Let me get this straight. You had Windows installed on your old drive and you decided to copy every files from that drive to a new drive and tried to boot with the new drive ? It unfortunately doesn't work that way. If you have important files I suggest you keep them on your old drive, put your new drive as the primary master, install windows from scratch and then copy the files on your new drive (not everything, just the ones you need like pictures, documents, save games, etc.). When Windows is installed (or any OS for that matter) it writes special info on the Master Boot Record (MBR) regarding the boot process and that info does not get copied from a drive to another even if you do this: "copy c:\*.* d:\" where c: is your old drive and d: is your new drive. Or what you can do is make an image of the drive with Norton Ghost and copy it on your new drive. That would work.
well, the crappy thing is that i have 2 ide slots and when i had 2 hard drives on ide 1 it worked ok, when i had a hard drive and the cdrw on ide 1 it was ok, but when i try to put anything onto the 2nd ide slot the comp boot screen wont even come up, even the power for the cdrw wont show(doesnt blink when started)even though there is power to the cdrw, so im stuck with one harddrive and one cdrw on the ide slot 1, so that is why im trying to transfer the old files to the new hard drive that way i can put the cdrw back on the comp. you say norton ghost can copy the files from hard drive 1 to hard drive 2 and id be ok?
You have to set the jumpers on your IDE devices in order for them to work as the secondary (slave) device. Set the device at the end of the IDE cable to "Master", set the device in the middle to "Slave". You have to do this in order for data to transfer between the devices and the motherboard properly. If you only have one device on an IDE chain, set it to "Master" and place it at the end of the chain.
Use your CD writer software to create an image - Nero, Roxy or whatever. Norton Ghost is like $70 bucks here.
Norton Ghost you can get Norton Ghost here for about $ 70. Or you can use your CD writer software to create your image.