Just purchased a new 320GB Seagate 7200 16mb Cache SATA drive. I wish to install windows xp onto the new drive, and use this old s***ter for media storage.
I install the new drive onto SATA2 and format in windows for an hour or so. Then, I install new drive onto SATA1 and old drive onto SATA2. I load bootable xp pro sp2 disc. Says format not is not ready, so deletes the partition and formats again, ok , maybe it formatted FAT32 in windows format i dunno, proceeds to Install files no worries. So it restarts and says let it boot off the hdd to finish installing the OS. In which case it boots with the error:
"Disk read error Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

Have formatted a few times over and tried installing windows , only with the same error.
Have also used 2 different Windows XP cd's.
Also, when the new drive is in SATA2 and i boot off teh old drive, i can read and write to it no problems.

Please! Help me guru's!

I had that error on a HDD once - turns out it read head was f***ed :(

bonus points if in before 6pm to tell me it's f***ed!

MSY closes at 6:30 i believe

is it set in your bios for the new disk to be read before any other disk?

Unplug the old one when trying to boot and see what happens. Sounds like it cant find the MBR

Tried booting with old xp install drive unplugged. Also , changed boot order.

Grab a UBCD and use the smart boot manager and see if you can get it too boot that way.

Downloading now

Your boot.ini file is incorrect since you installed Windows with the old hard drives installed. The new Windows install created an entry in the boot.ini file for a second OS option in the menu along with the boot files are still on the old drive.

I would remove the old drives from the system and boot the XP CD then do a repair install to correct all of the problems you created.

Without sounding arrogant, my answer is right and I got in b4 6pm..

What do I win?

Disconnect other drive and do repair install , ok , i'll try that when this download has finished.
Appreciated.

But wouldnt it just give me the option to boot either , rather than say 'a disk read error has occured' ?

nope

trying now..

Did repair install with other drive disconnected. Took me to a DOS-Prompt. I ran fixboot and fixmbr. No success.

Try formatting and reinstalling windows without other drive connected?

what do you normally win for any correct answer here? a warm "get f***ed" usually.

"Thanx-a-million!" ??

Perform a Repair Installation

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx

3. Do not choose the option to press R to use the Recovery Console.

Sounds like the recovery console to me..

Spewin , i'll try that :(

Is the drive a SATA 2 drive? Is your motherboard SATA 2 compatible? Maybe stick the little "3gb/s limit" jumper on the drive and see if that works. There should be a little diagram on the top of the drive that tells you which pins to put it on. My sata2 Seagate does anyway.

edit: oh and, don't make the entire drive one giant partition, make a small 10-20gig partition for windows & program files for crying out loud, it'll take WAY less time to format.

last edited by whoop at 17:14:48 13/Apr/07

He won't even need to format, just need to do a repair install, not go to the recovery console.

Mobo is ASUS P5N32-SLI Deluxe

There is no repair option on that screen.

Enter to install XP
D to delete partition
C t create partition in unpartitioned space

C: Partition 1 [NTFS] 305245MB
Unpartitioned Space 0MB


??

Also , ASUS Mobo Book says under "Spec Summary - Storage"

4 x SATA 3GB/s devices

then says
Silicon image 3132 SATA Controller supports:
1x Internal SATA 3GB/s HDD

Odd, just re-install then

Just so I understand what you're doing, is this correct?
Brand new drive, nothing on it and you want to put windows on it?
Old hard drive that has windows on it, you want it to be a storage drive only?

If so, of course you can't boot from the new hard drive because it has no OS on it and more than likely the partition won't have been set active. Disconnect your old hard drive since windows has a tendency to futz with it and on occasion I've had it put the boot loader there for some REALLY odd reason.

Plug in your new hard drive, go into the BIOS and make sure your cd drive is amongst the boot devices then hit f8 I think it is when you see the "testing memory" screen and when it comes time to boot you'll see a menu of drives to boot from, select your bootable XP cd (or you could just set the cd drive to be the master boot drive in the BIOS but then you gotta go change it back later so I use the boot device selection menu)

Delete your bloody huge partition & make a 20gig windows partition using the screen the bootable cd gives you (or you can leave it as one giant 200gig partition if you really want to), do a quick format using NTFS and install windows there.

You can also create your other partition(s) in that same screen, or wait until you're in windows & use the logical disk manager thing to create them.

Reason I do that is if I ever have to reinstall windows, I don't have to wait hours to format an entire 200gig partition and also I can store my stuff on another partition while I format the windows one.

Deleted the old partition and created a new smaller partition, it's formatting now. Freshly installing xp with old drive disconnected, we'll see what happens

Thank-you's to all who posted above!
Problem Solvered!

I can only assume you didn't create an emergency disk, so in that case, a repair install is not possible because boot.ini is on your other hard drive, hence, why you can't boot off it.

But a re-install will work too, just takes a little longer.

Ok , new problem.

It starts to copy the files from the cd in windows mode now.
Then stops with the following error:

Installation failed D:\I386\asms Error Message: The parameter is incorrect.


Any hints?

I would say try your other XP disk, probably bad CD.

Also try taking out your PCI cards that aren't necessary for installation, example: nic, sound, modem, etc.. Then try it and if it completes, just put the cards back in and boot up.

Tried different cd, also , no PCI cards apart from PCIE video.

Try a different DVD/CD drive, try cleaning the CDs..

Failing that, try making a slipstreamed CD with SP2:

http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html

Thanx gimpy. New CD-ROM work. What a load of MS err BS

LOL

Sounds like you've been having fun. I also had a bit of fun last night.

Yesterday afternoon I'm playing WoW and the screen locks up and the machine reboots. I'm like WTF? but it comes good again after the reboot so I keep playing. A bit later I'm browsing using Firefox and it brings up that stupid Windows error saying such and such and would I like to let MS know about it. I hit no and the machine reboots without me telling it to. So I'm like double WTF? now. When it reboots again I start checking QGL and after a few pages it brings up another error and the machine reboots.

At this stage I'm getting worried thinking I have a virus so I first try a scan with ad-aware and it dies in the ass after I double click it. Error message happens again but no reboot. So I try spybot and that wont load either and another error message pops up. I also notice by this time my virus scanner is red in the task bar when it should be green (active). It's about this time every time I try and click on something the machine gives me that stupid MS error and reboots. Twas getting late so I decided to shut down and worry about it tonight after I get home from work.

Anyway, while at work I was thinking of possible reasons why it's f***ing up so when I got home I pulled the two sticks of 1 gig RAM out to see if thats the problem. First stick I leave in the computer is still doing the same thing and stuffing up. Take that one out and put the second one in. Woot!! It works and doesn't f*** up in the first few minutes.

So that was my nightmare computer story. Thank god it was just a lousy stick of ram that was faulty and nothing worse. Funny thing is I just bought this ram about 2 weeks ago and it's starting to f*** up now. I always thought it was f***ed when you bought it or it wasn't. I guess I was wrong...about a great many things.

8-)

get a ram tester rev

At least the ram didnt die 2 weeks outta warranty :)

Thanx gimpy

np, learn 2 google :)