XP: boot failure system halted (strange phenomenon)

J

Jaaz

Geek Trainee
Hi,

I have an old computer (P4 1.8GHz) with 2 HDDs.
One of the HDDs holds the OS and most of the material(named C and E), and the other one is quite old and started making troubles lately. (named D, should contain a bit of data and that's it)

In order to avoid the old problematic HDD (D), I decided to remove it.
When doing so, the BIOS will pass ok, but immediately after that I'm getting an error:
Boot Failure System Halted
I must say that I didn't change the connector of the main HDD, and checked that it's connected ok.

If I'm connecting the old HDD (D) back again the OS will load fine.
I can also load an OS from CDROM while having the problematic HDD disconnected (or connected), but not from the main HDD.

I tried to renew the MBR of the main HDD (might be damaged?) but it didn't change anything.
I also looked for any reference for D: in any *.ini file in the good HDD (the one which contains the OS), but I didn't find any.

Also in order avoid XP from accessing the old HDD during runtime I made D disabled (in the device manager), but I still see some disk errors in the system log for D - like the OS still tries to access D.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
This is a little confusing, You have two hard dives right ? then whats with C:/D:/ and E:/ I count three here..Do you have one partition into two ? Anyway, Just use the one that is good, And wipe it and start from scratch.. You can remove everything with Partition magic..
 
Yea, the good one has 2 partitions, C and E.

I don't want to start from scratch.
It doesn't smell like a non solvable issue, that's why I'm consulting with you guys.

Looking for ideas to try and cure this problem without killing the patient.. :)
 
What do you want to do then ? Your problem is in your boot manager and need to repair or remove or fixed... Do you plan on using all three partitions ?
 
I don't know, this is why I'm consulting with you..
I'm planning to use only 2 of these 3 partitions, as one of them is on a faulty HDD which I don't really need.

Your observation is that I have a problem in my boot manager.
What kind of problem are you thinking of? do you know how can I restore it?

Thanks
 
Ok! so are you going to be using the one with two partitions on it ? Your problem is with two partitions and 2 hard drives it needs to know which to boot, and by removing one it needs to be fixed.
So ! tell me the error you are getting and how is it going to boot first.. Are you running XP OR ? Is the second partition going to be live ? Or is it just for space ?
 
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