slave HD blocks XP booting up

[PIT]

http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':unsure:\' /> Hi, experts!
As it seems, the slave HD in my PC has a problem with one or more of its directories (MBR ...). When I switch on the PC with this HD connected, XP begins its boot-up but then stops with a black screen and the only further event is some kind of "searching"-noise from the HD. When I disconnect the HD, XP boots up normally. The slave HD has two NTFS (!) partitions and contains hundreds of MP3-files with pretty long names. I tried recovering with DOS tools which worked, but only with those ugly 8.3 names. Has anyone an idea how to recover my cute music collection properly? Thanks in advance!

[D1Ringer]

Sounds like your boot.ini file is pointing to the wrong partition. with os hdd only, start up and go to notepad and go to file, open, boot ini. it should look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


if not, rename your boot.ini and save it and try editing with these values. Make a
ASR (automated system recovery) disk set first to avoid any problems.