Have you tried to simply install on a two-drive Drive Cable win the "Slave" or "Secondary" Drive position. Then make sure the new drive (hopefully bootable) is in the "Master" or "Primary" Position on the drive cable.?
Make sure you set the "Boot Devices" to a) CD-ROM, b) Hard Drive ( Primary if it is an option).
Then turn-off or disable all the other boot devices.
Then try to boot the machine.
(Yes gang - I know that WINBLOWS does not like to have two boot drives on the same cable. But this sometimes works).
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I also have a second idea:
In this scenario you disable the CD-ROM Drive in BIOS and disconnect the drive data cable.
Set the BIOS Boot Devices to "Hard Drive" and then disable all the other boot devices
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Now install the"New Boot Drive as the primary drive.
Install the Old Boot Drive as the secondary drive.
Re boot..
You should be booting to the new drive , and you should be able to "see" the secondary (old) drive.
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All you have to do is delete the WINDOWS Directory from the Old Drive. This should leave you with a bootable drive with no OS (which is what WINBLOWS really wants.
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Now you can re-install the two-drive cable configuration and use the two drives on the same drive port as Primary-The New Bootable Drive, and Secondary- the old drive.
Now you can reinstall your CD-ROM drive. All you have left is to set the BIOS to Auto on Drive 1 Primary, and Drive 1 Secondary (both being the hard drives) , then Drive 2 - Primary (the CD-ROM Drive). Note: should you desire to have the CD-ROM as Drive 1 - fine, just change the Hard Drives to Drive Two Primary and Secondary.
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REAL CONSIDERATION: This method may not work if the new drive is a VISTA and the Old Drive is an XP. One of my associates swears it will - but I have Not Tested the Vista/vs/XP mix - so don't count on the mix working. My guess would be - NOT!. But hey, everything is possible, until proven impossible. Right?
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Good Luck
Dave R.
Motherboard-Tech @ phoenixcomputerlabs . com
