My pc is a dual boot. I've got 2 versions of XP on it. Option 1 is for the whole family it runs on a sata drive. Option 2 is for chris only has very little software on it boots up and runs very fast, its on an old IDE drive.

The other day when the kid was shutting down, it hung just before it powered off. All I could do is hit the reset.

So now, when it boots up I get this Please wait for IDE scan, then it comes up with a bunch of RAID disc (0) ...(4) not detected, do I want to go set up blah blah. To cut a long story short, when I get to the OS selection screen if I choose Option 1 it boots up the chris only XP. If I choose Option 2 it comes up with the usual windows failed last time do you want to load command prompt safe mode etc. Any of those options just cause the thing to go through the boot process again.

Its kinda like its not seeing the sata drive at all. But when I boot up in chris only mode (even though its through the wrong option) I can actually see the SATA drive and access it.

What I want to do is run the detect and repair off the original install disk, only to do that I need to load a sata driver off a floppy disk!

Where the hell am I going to get a floppy disk in 2011? Not at office works.

Or are tehre any other bright ideas to fix my problem. The pressure to create mor eusers on my clean chris only install is becoming too great. I have to get this fixed before homeowrk is due.

They disks are listed as a clearance item on office works website for $1. Some very false advertising going on. From my days at uni and car clubs they are notoriously useless at keeping my data safe. If you didnt have backups on 3 different disks you had no chance.

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I would say that is a corrupt windows xp installation not a hardware issue. lucky youhave the other xp install as otherwise I dont recon it would work.

have you tried booting into safe mode. get the driver off a usb thumb drive rather than floppy. floopies are dead mate.

when I try booting in safe mode it jsut restarts the whole POST thing again. Apparently there are floppy disks available at the uni shop. Hopefully that gets me sorted. Its scared me into getting a backup portable hard drive though. There is a lot of photo memories and music on that thing that could never be recovered if permanently lost.