Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Hard Drives: 2 ea. WDC WD5000AAJS w/ NVIDIA STRIPE 931.52G (label = WINXP (C) in the first partition is 156 GB, the remaining space is unallocated)
1 ea. WDC WD5000AAJS stand-alone SATA drive (the whole 500 GB is partioned for storing my data in a single drive, label = Shared (E))
1 ea. WDC WD3200AAJB stand-alone PATA drive (there is an active partition of 111 GB on this drive, the remaining space is unallocated, label = XP64 (H))
I was able to determine the HDD mount order in BIOS with GAG by adding test partions to two of the drives. They are:
1. PATA Master (XP64)
2. SATA Stand-Alone (Shared)
3. SATA RAID 0 (WINXP)
Only the WINXP partition has an operating system so far.
I installed GAG to a floppy to test and I set the only operating system to the number 3 drive. I selected NO in the prompt to exchange dive letters since the WINXP partion is already C (as far as I can tell). However, I don't get that prompt if I add the XP64 partition as a menu item.
When I return to the main menu and select this item I immediately get this prompt:
NTDLR is missing
Press Ctl + Alt + Del to restart
I have three questions:
1. Do I need to swap drive letters on my only operating system to boot successfully?
2. Is there a risk in doing so?
3. How can I restore the drive letters if I can't boot Widows XP at all?
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Let me describe the hardware first:
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Hard Drives: 2 ea. WDC WD5000AAJS w/ NVIDIA STRIPE 931.52G (label = WINXP (C) in the first partition is 156 GB, the remaining space is unallocated)
1 ea. WDC WD5000AAJS stand-alone SATA drive (the whole 500 GB is partioned for storing my data in a single drive, label = Shared (E))
1 ea. WDC WD3200AAJB stand-alone PATA drive (there is an active partition of 111 GB on this drive, the remaining space is unallocated, label = XP64 (H))
I was able to determine the HDD mount order in BIOS with GAG by adding test partions to two of the drives. They are:
1. PATA Master (XP64)
2. SATA Stand-Alone (Shared)
3. SATA RAID 0 (WINXP)
Only the WINXP partition has an operating system so far.
I installed GAG to a floppy to test and I set the only operating system to the number 3 drive. I selected NO in the prompt to exchange dive letters since the WINXP partion is already C (as far as I can tell). However, I don't get that prompt if I add the XP64 partition as a menu item.
When I return to the main menu and select this item I immediately get this prompt:
NTDLR is missing
Press Ctl + Alt + Del to restart
I have three questions:
1. Do I need to swap drive letters on my only operating system to boot successfully?
2. Is there a risk in doing so?
3. How can I restore the drive letters if I can't boot Widows XP at all?
I have answered these questions myself with testing. Here is what I found:
1. Do I need to swap drive letters on my only operating system to boot successfully?
Yes, that was what I needed to make GAG work in this configuration.
2. Is there a risk in doing so?
No. Apparently,swapping drive letters is done in RAM and does not survive the next boot.
3. How can I restore the drive letters if I can't boot Widows XP at all?
No need to. See the second part of the answer to the second question.