Hard disk woes - help!

My old computer had three hard drives:

Maxtor 9 gig
Seagate 10.2 gig
Seagate 40 gig

The system files, Windows, etc were all on the Maxtor 9 gig, as that's the oldest drive.

However, I recently got a new computer (see http://www.doomworld.com/forums/viewthread.php?FID=1&TID=5435) with this hard drive:

Maxtor 40 gig

This new drive came completely empty (i.e. no OS or anything), and as there's only room for one other hard drive, the other 40 gig (there's both a CD-RW drive and a DVD-R drive), I had to copy everything from the two smaller drives onto it.

Before doing this I decided to do a bit of "spring cleaning" on the drives, and in the process it appears that I've completely fux0red things up. The computer now refuses to boot from any of the four drives.

The three drives without system files (obviously) just report that no boot record can be found, but the one that it should boot from (which I have set up as the Primary Slave) now says "Error in previous device".

I don't think that fact that the boot drives is a Slave rather than a Master has anything to do with it, but I could be wrong.

I've tried booting up with various bootdisks, but it reports that "this drive is not ready". This problem is not with the floppy disk drive, as I've tried it with two different drives.

All I can think of to fix all this is to either put one of my drives in someone else's computer and copy the relevant files over, or put someone else's hard drive in my computer and doing the same.

So does anyone have another solution?

Disconnect the drives that won't be used as system volumes, then, unless you desperately need anything on it, format and reinstall. Trust me, it's far less painful than anything else we could suggest.

[edit]Any drive you're going to boot from should be the primary master, not slave. As far as I can recall, Windows absolutely will not boot from anything other than what it considers the primary master, unless you trick the hell out of it.[/edit]

DC

Well, I already have disconnect all the drives except the relevant one, but the trouble is that I can't boot up at all (as I said, not even boot disks work).

[edit] I know that it _will_ boot up from Primary Slave, as that's what it was before I started deleting stuff. I did it by making the BIOS check IDE-1 before IDE-0 [/edit]

Not got a windows start up disk?
If you can get to any dos prompt type sys c: that should make c drive a boot drive

There's that bloody high IQ at work. Good workin with ya, fignuts.

DC

Well, I found out there were a couple of problems:

1) I had the floppy disk drive connected the wrong way around. D'oh!

2) Both the Win '98 bootdisks I have don't work (and I have no idea why).

I managed to boot into DOS using a Win '95 bootdisk, but of course that means I can't use sys.

Basically I just need to get hold of my flatmate who has Win '98 and either borrow his CD or make a bootdisk on his computer. Unfortunately, he never seems to be in :|

Lure him in using a clever trap involving prostitutes, mosquito netting, and eighteen cubic feet of Saran Wrap. When he comes inside, nail his feet to the floor and quickly attach a collar and ear tag so that you can track him at all times. Problem solved!

DC

Lure him in using a clever trap involving prostitutes, mosquito netting, and eighteen cubic feet of Saran Wrap. When he comes inside, nail his feet to the floor and quickly attach a collar and ear tag so that you can track him at all times. Problem solved!

DC

ROFL, it's funny cos it works! :)