Windows not booting

I have a strange and complex situation-

I have a PC with Windows XP and 2 hard drives. Windows stopped booting
on the C drive. So I took out that drive and put in a spare drive and
installed windows on it so it would boot. I can now access the second
drive, retrieve the files from it, and then put in the original C
drive as the second drive. Then I hope to either grab the files from
it as well and scrap the whole thing, or, better yet, work on it to
get that OS to boot.

This leads me to several questions 1) Can I set the HD (jumpers?) so
that when I turn the PC on I have a choice of OS to boot from, so that
if I try something to fix it, I can test it without taking the whole
thing apart each time. How would I do this?

2) I don't know how to work on the OS when it's on a secondary
drive...when I open the Control Panel for instance from the start
menu, it will be the CP for the main drive...correct? I'm not sure if
what I'm asking even makes sense, but it seems like I would have to
find the controls and settings and tweaks for this drive in the system
folders instead of thru other Windows means (start menu, Run command,
My Computer, etc)

3) Third, I'm not sure how I can fix the OS anyway - it was working
fine, the last thing I was doing was finding tons of spy/mal/ware on
the drive, using adaware to delete them, and that's where it got
stuck. A while before that I also used some instuctions to turn off
the logon/welcome screen, setting a admin password and set to auto
login. I had not yet rebooted after this, I wanted to delete the
spyware first. It got so stuck that I had to pull the plug. After that
it would not boot, even in safe mode. It would just scroll thru a list
of files and then stop. I also tried to do a windows repair, where it
would ask for he admin password, and then just drop me to a prompt
C:/Windows and just sit there. So I'm not sure what I can do to fix
this or how I can acces what I need to access to fix it since it will
now be a secondary hard drive.

Thank god for these news groups....thank you all for the many past and
I'm sure future posts that I have recieved so many good answers from.

Your HDD you are trying to fix probably infected with virus that distroy
data from system files and caused failure of going to windows.

1) If your BIOS supports Boot order settings, ie. boot from IDE0, IDE1, IDE2
or IDE3 settings.Or if you use 2 HDD from different IDE Channels, ie.
Primary IDE (C Secondary IDE (D + CD-ROM, disable one of the channel to
boot, but if you must use the CD-ROM, you need to use maybe a SCSI CD ROM or
4 IDE Channel Mainboards. A liffle difficult with the second part unless you
leave out the CD-ROM.

2) You cannot treak your other HDD that way, what ever you run, it run on
the C: (Unless you can set the BIOS to boot with D

3) You can try booting the failed HDD with windows XP CD, then install will
detect the drive has XP and ask if you want to install (Upgrade) or (Fresh
Install), if you take (Upgrade) your data will still be there, but programs
you installed may have to install again.

"fear" <>
???????: .com...
> I have a strange and complex situation-
>
> I have a PC with Windows XP and 2 hard drives. Windows stopped booting
> on the C drive. So I took out that drive and put in a spare drive and
> installed windows on it so it would boot. I can now access the second
> drive, retrieve the files from it, and then put in the original C
> drive as the second drive. Then I hope to either grab the files from
> it as well and scrap the whole thing, or, better yet, work on it to
> get that OS to boot.
>
> This leads me to several questions 1) Can I set the HD (jumpers?) so
> that when I turn the PC on I have a choice of OS to boot from, so that
> if I try something to fix it, I can test it without taking the whole
> thing apart each time. How would I do this?
>
> 2) I don't know how to work on the OS when it's on a secondary
> drive...when I open the Control Panel for instance from the start
> menu, it will be the CP for the main drive...correct? I'm not sure if
> what I'm asking even makes sense, but it seems like I would have to
> find the controls and settings and tweaks for this drive in the system
> folders instead of thru other Windows means (start menu, Run command,
> My Computer, etc)
>
> 3) Third, I'm not sure how I can fix the OS anyway - it was working
> fine, the last thing I was doing was finding tons of spy/mal/ware on
> the drive, using adaware to delete them, and that's where it got
> stuck. A while before that I also used some instuctions to turn off
> the logon/welcome screen, setting a admin password and set to auto
> login. I had not yet rebooted after this, I wanted to delete the
> spyware first. It got so stuck that I had to pull the plug. After that
> it would not boot, even in safe mode. It would just scroll thru a list
> of files and then stop. I also tried to do a windows repair, where it
> would ask for he admin password, and then just drop me to a prompt
> C:/Windows and just sit there. So I'm not sure what I can do to fix
> this or how I can acces what I need to access to fix it since it will
> now be a secondary hard drive.
>
> Thank god for these news groups....thank you all for the many past and
> I'm sure future posts that I have recieved so many good answers from.