A few questions

[Killy]

First of all, I am finally installing WinXP to replace that peice of crap named WinME. I will be installing it on a old hard drive my brother got, I need to install it so it is Secondary Master, how should I set the pin. I dont remember the brand (My brother isnt here at the moment and I dont know where the HD is). Then, once this is done, I know I need some program to handle the Dual-Boot could somebody tell me about a good program to do that.

[crono_logical]

The pin diagram should be on the drive itself, as it varies from drive to drive :p

As for Dual-Boot, WinXP itself should detect the presence of WinME, and create it's own dual-boot menu if you install it on a drive other than WinME's. I myself use BootMagic though (from Partition Magic), since I used to have a triple boot with WinXP/98/Linux and didn't want to use the Linux boot menu at the time (I no longer have Linux installed now anyway) :p

[Killy]

So I dont need to do anything?

That really great!

Oh and Can XP detect another copy of WinXP if I have 2 installed. As the drive I will be installing Xp on will be removed afterwards. Its a test drive to see if my pirated copy of XP works on my machine.

[crono_logical]

No, I can't help you with anything as far as jumpers goes, you have to work that out yourself when you physically get the drive :p

I know XP will detect if another XP is installed, I don't know if you can have two XP installs dual-booting with each other on the same machine though (although my guess is it should be possible :p ) Why not install the 2nd copy after removing the test drive if it works, then you won't need to dual boot in the end at all :p

[Killy]

When I try to install XP, it makes me reboot my computer, and then proceeds to the installation menu. Then it scans the different Hard Drives on my computer, telling me to choose which one I want to install XP to. It formats that drive (To FAT32) and then, when it is about to install, it tells me that my C: drive is corrupted and cannot be repaired. Is it the evil work of WinME or is it something else.

I have already run a Scandisc on C: (the fastest one, not the long one). And it didnt help, so what am I supposed to do.

Edit: I did a complete Scandisc on C: (The longest one). Apparently everything is fine on C: and it still wont work (Same message).

[Yrkoon]

not sure whats happening there but u could always try having one cd rom and 1 hard drive plugged in only.

make sure sure its a different hard drive than the one thats giving you xp install probs. worth a shot :)

put the hd jumper onto master and had the cd-rom on master on a differnt ide lead :)

(ms=master)

[Killy]

Ive got 2 Hard drives, my Master drive is partitionned into C: , D: and E:. Due to the fact that I didnt have any other space slot to install drive to on my motherboard, I couldnt install the drive I was talking about at the beginning of this thread. Since I want to install Xp on E: I cannot remove it.

[Endless]

Fill this, because the way you describe it is confusing:

Primary:
- Master:
- Slave:

Secondary:
- Master
- Slave

with the following:
HD(partitions if more than one, what is currently on each of them)
CDROM/DVDROM.

[Killy]

Alright

Primary:
- Master: C: the one that I am having problems with (Contains C: D: and E:
- Slave: F: The drive I use to store big files

Secondary:
- Master: None
- Slave: None

It says my C: drive is corrupted but according to Scandisc, it isnt.

The drive I was talking about earlier could not be installed due to a lack of slots on my motherboard.

[Endless]

Did you format the whole primary master disc? Or just fdisked it? Or just formatted one of the three partitions?
(Also, check that the cables are plugged properly, just in case).

[Killy]

I formatted my E: partition (The one where I want to install WinXP to) twice already, on fast, and one complete. But my C: drive still contains WinME, if possible I want to have Xp installed before removing it.

[Endless]

Try this:
Do a scandisk on the whole drive (c: + d: + e:) with surface check, from ME first, then if nothing's found, try it after booting from the XP CD (it should be possible, if not, try from Me's CD). If you can't scandisk from the CDs, try a third party disc scanner.
The other thing you can try is to momentarily unplug the primary master drive, and plug the one you were given instead (temporarily taking the other one's place), then try to install XP on that drive. How small is your tower to not have room for a new disc? Because mine is only a medium tower, but I have 5 3"1/2 and 4 5"1/4 slots.

[Killy]

I already did a full surface check on my C: drive, and it didnt find anything, ill do one on D: and E: soon.

I dotn have any space slots on my motherboard to plug new Hard Drive to, space inside my tower isnt the problem.

[Endless]

O_o
If there's nothing plugged as secondary master/slave, then you have space. Even old motherboards have two ide connectors, all you need is the cable.

[Killy]

I got a slave drive to store big files, there really is nothing. My other IDE cable is used for my 2 CD drives, and there some other cable that looks just like those for my HDs but smaller, but thats all there is on my motherboard.

[Endless]

Ahhh. If you had filled the "Secondary" part of the miniform earlier with CD/DVD Drive, I wouldn't have been confused. xD

[Killy]

Im going to do a full scan tonight, but I dont think it will solve anything, if it doesnt work, do you have any idea about what I should do?

[crono_logical]

If WinME's full scan says no problem, but WinXP still doesn't like the drive, I'd think the partition table is screwed up. Easy way to fix it is delete all partitions and then recreate them, although you'll lose everything on the disk, so back up first.

You could attempt to repair it by booting linux off a floppy disk and using sfdisk, but there's no guarantee that it'll work - I've tried repairing corrupt partition tables twice before with this method - the first time worked, the second time failed and resulted in all data on the disk being lost (which'll happen anyway if you choose the repartition method above instead).