What makes a drive bootable?

ProfessorM · #1 (**permalink**) 02-11-2009, 06:12 PM

I'd like to know how the BIOS figures that a hard drive is a system drive, i.e., a bootable one.

Background: My installation was getting bogged down and I wanted to reinstall Windows XP without losing my recent work.

I connected in a new disk in the location of the old one, and installed a new copy of XP. Then, I connected the old disk in the second bay. Both are set to cable-select.

So far, so good. The fresh install brings up an uncluttered Windows system on C:. I can go to D: and find all my old data in place, and move things at leisure.

Only thing is, the opening screen offers me a choice of booting from either drive, and I do not want to risk starting with the old drive running the show.

I did rename the directory WINDOWS on the old drive as "was_WINDOWS", but that didn't seem to help. Now, of course, booting from the old drive wouild probably just lock up the system. What else would I have to remove (or rename) from the old drive to get the BIOS to see it as just a data drive?

Digerati · #2 (**permalink**) 02-11-2009, 09:12 PM

Have a boot sector on a drive makes it bootable. To remove one the options, you need to edit the boot.ini file. See How do I remove boot choices that I no longer want?

ProfessorM · #3 (**permalink**) 17-11-2009, 08:26 PM

Thanks. That's what I needed to know.