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rogerleclercqFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Windows 7 Pro SATA and XP Pro IDE boot sequence clash

I have a boot sequence problem using one SATA HD and one IDE HD.

I have just assembled a new system with Windows 7 Pro installed on a Seagate 500Gb drive. So far so good. BIOS system information detects Primary IDE Master as the SATA drive and Primary IDE Slave as the Optical drive.  Boot sequence is set to Optical drive first and then the Seagate SATA drive second. This works fine.

I wish to have the old Hard drive connected as a secondary drive in the PC for the purpose of file transfer and reference only. The old drive has Windows XP Pro on and has an IDE connector.

The new Foxconn motherboard has a single IDE socket and four SATA sockets.
So I connect the IDE drive to the only available IDE socket, check the BIOS system information (OK-it is detected as Third IDE Master) and finally the Boot sequence.  But I find the SATA drive is no longer offered as a boot option – only the IDE drive can be seen. And of course on powering up, the system tries to run the old corrupted XP o/s to no useful purpose.

I could remove the IDE drive and read the files off it using a USB connection but I would much prefer to have the drive inside the PC to allow me to easily refer to it and decide what programs I need to put on the new system. Data is already saved safely. I just need XP Pro not to run and elbow Windows 7 out of the way!

Can anybody offer a solution please?
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SysExpert
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not usre but I would first get the latest BIOS update.

second option is to use one of the tools like VISTABootPro or EasyBCD  to see if you can add a boot loader ( WIN 7 ) to your old IDE or add a loader on XP to boot to Win 7

I hope this helps !
Vista uses a different boot loader to XP so you have to be careful of the tools you use to try and repair it - try EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/G/NeoSmart+Technologies+Guides;jsessionid=E4B5CE98F2592FC73DECAA5FF6E6AD19

or VistaBootPro http://www.vistabootpro.org/ - both are free and work well.

Incidently see http://apcmag.com/5023/dual_booting_xp_with_vista for a step to step guide dual booting xp and vista
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Mike Grizzle
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I do not want XP to boot at all and I surely don't want to put something on the old IDE drive that makes it essential link in the boot chain for the W7 on the new SATA drive to work. That would be like putting a crank handle made of spaghetti into a Ferrari....So I don't appear to have clearly shown what the problem is I am trying to solve.

This is a totally new machine out of the box which works perfectly. BUT I am unable to add an extra drive in a simple storage capacity.. Why?

I cannot believe it is an outdated BIOS isse. And Vista should surely not be involved in the solution. Am I missing something?
Mike - you have grasped the problem but I boot into the BIOS only to find the SATA drive with W7 has become invisible. Then if I remove the power to the IDE drive ... it re-appears. I will try your suggestion of switching the jumper to slave (even though I am using the master socket on the IDE cable) Hang in there for a report on that one.
Bingo! Mike I actually switched jumper from Cable Select to Master (which was the socket being used on the ribbon) and this allowed proper detection of the Hard drives in system setup and most importantly the SATA drive remained in the Boot sequence as the boot HD. System now recognises the old IDE drive for file read etc but is not trying to boot from it.

Will return shortly for the points award. Many thanks.
Mike
You have the points and many thanks. Is it possible you can send one more message clarifying the solution that i can accept as the solution? Just seems that the solution is actually contained in the final sentence of your comment and accepting that comment as the solution will not be very helpful to others who may not read on through the next couple of messages.
Cheers again.
Roger
Roger,

So, Changing the jumper on the IDE Hard Drive allowed your Primary SATA drive to boot first. I am glad I was able to help you.

Mike