I have two hard discs, one windows 98 (master) and windows XP (slave). I decided to slave it as it didn't start. How do I boot from my slave disc (windows XP)

You should have attempted a fix on the drive while it was still connected as the master drive. To make a drive that was previously a master boot device become a secondary device is possible, but a little complex. It involves "messing" around the boot sector(MBR) of the present master drive to point to the slave system partition.

I'll advice you to return the drive as the master as try a repair on it. Its easier than the whole "slave boot" thing you want to achieve.

I've tried repairing the master but it keeps giving me an error "error PXE" "media error, check cable" Please what do these mean? Thanks Maleeq.

Hmm, now that you've mentioned PXE (P[/b]reboot e[b]X[/b]ecution [b]E[/b]nvironment), I think I know where the issue might be.

You see, the PXE is an environment to boot computers using a [b]network interface card independently of available data storage devices (like hard disks) or installed operating systems. A system that is PXE bootstrapped would tend to ignore the installed OS and seek a PXE boot server on the network, if connected. I guess you are not connected to a network? or at least, you have you network cable unplugged. . .and thus the error message you got. (As a check, the error message should be reading PXE-E61: Media test failure.check cable)

To get rid of this message,
- simply go into you BIOS under the boot device sequence/priority.
- You should be provided with these options(the names I have presented might not be exact as your PCs', but they
mean the same thing. . .just work out the match with yours):
- Network Boot (or IBA 4.0.19 Slot 0208)
- Hard Drive
- Optical Drive(CD ROM)

- Whatever the sequence, just make sure you have the Hard drive come before the Network Boot option.
- To be on a safer side, you could just disable the network boot option.

PS: Also make sure you dont have both drives jumpered as masters. I cant remember the error message that pops up when this happens but I think it pops a PXE error. . .(not sure sha)

Hope this helps!

I hope so.Thaks Maleeq I'll get back to you if I encounter more problems.

I did just that and it stopped giving me that error, but it still won't start, it gives me that boot windows normally, safe mode,, and when I select boot normally, it loads some files and just hangs, and if I select safe mode or any other option it hangs.

reinstall windows

@suave

Well, you could try a repair on the windows installation. Boot from in the installation CD and try a repair.

Thanks maleeq, I'll do just that.

when I started normally it said cannot start 'cos file not found windows root>\system 32\ntoskrnl.exe
and when I started with boot disk it said cannot start because file missing "File\i386\biosinfo.inf" "code 47872"