Our third Q & A of the
week comes from Gary via the reader feedback
page
. Remember to try our friendly
forums for help too.
Q: I tried using norton ghost to transfer XP from drive C to
drive F which is my new hard drive, but I immediately got a black screen
saying "no operating system." I guess I've done something wrong, can
you help me?
A: It sounds like you've made a mistake either with the
ghosting itself or more likely with the position of the drives after the
ghosting. I'm assuming that you removed or formatted your original Windows
XP system drive after using ghost, otherwise your PC should have
booted up normally. The most worrying possibility is that you
accidentally ghosted your new F: drive over your old C: drive. In
this case, see our
data recovery guide
for help.
If you are sure you did
not make a mistake in the ghosting process, but you did remove or format your old C: drive, you should either
place your new drive in the same position occupied by the old drive (i.e primary
(master) drive on the first drive controller) or change the boot order in
the BIOS so that your machine attempts to boot from your new drive
first. Most motherboards will not automatically
check other installed hard drives for operating systems if the first
drive refuses to boot (though they will check other devices like floppy drives
and optical drives; go figure). For more help, see our hard
drive installation guide.