Wayne,

Why don't you go the other way and take the drive from the older PC (OLD
disk) and put it in the PC that will be used as the source (NEW disk).  You
can set up the OLD drive as a master drive on the second  IDE channel -
drive D.  Let the BIOS do it's auto detect.  Have a startup disk handy and
do the following:

1) Delete and then create the primary partition using FDISK (on drive 2 -
the empty OLD drive!).  Then do a format d:/s to prepare the OLD drive.
Restart the PC and go into win95.

2) From a DOS WINDOW INSIDE WINDOWS95 (THIS IS IMPORTANT!), type the
following command:

        XCOPY C:\*.* D:\*.* /s/c/h/e/r/k

Notes: If you get a "switch not recognized" error, you're doing it wrong. To
find out what these switches do, type xcopy /? from a DOS WINDOW INSIDE
WINDOWS95. This command assumes that your new hard drive was assigned the
letter D:\. Choose "yes" when asked to overwrite any files.

3) When copying is finished, turn off the computer, open it up, and
reconfigure so that the OLD hard drive is the Primary Master drive. Leave
the source (NEW) disk unconnected. Let the BIOS redetect again.

4) Boot to the Win95 startup disk. Using FDISK (or other such utility), set
the Primary Partition on the OLD drive as Active.

5) Eject the Startup disk and reboot. If Windows95 does not boot from the
hard drive, put the startup disk back in and boot to it. At the A:\ prompt,
type:

SYS C:

This will recopy the system files to the new hard drive.
Reboot to the hard drive. It should boot to Windows95.

If it's OK in this PC, then xfer the OLD drive back to the older PC.
Reconnect the NEW drive in it's PC.

There are lots of reasons why the above procedure might not work on a
particular system. You'll be doing a lot of plugging and unplugging of IDE
and power cables, moving jumpers around, so it's easy to get one of these
things wrong, ie, incorrectly jumpered drives, cables that aren't correctly
seated on the pins, incorrect HD parameters in CMOS, etc. Also, if you have
an older BIOS, it might not correctly recognize your new, larger hard drive.
Also, the instructions above are a bit tricky to follow, and unless you are
very careful, you will do something wrong the first time you try it.

Hope this helps!

Tim Klymkow

-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne&Tammy <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, February 07, 1998 11:37 PM
Subject: strange hard drive problem


>Hello all,
>
>   I've just come across a problem that has me stumped.  I just took a Hard
>drive out of a brand new machine to copy its contents to another drive
>which has been corrupted, in an identical machine.
>
>   When the machine boots, it gives me a "missing operating system" error.
>
>   Yes, I made sure the drive worked fine in the original machine, and yes,
>it was set as the active partition.
>
>      These machines are identical in every way (motherboard, cpu, ram,
>video card, etc.) except for the drives.
>
>        When I boot from a floppy, and check the disk, it is there with all
the
>appropriate files (msdos.sys, io.sys, command.com, etc..).
>
>        I am auto-detecting the drive, and it is being found no problem.
In
>short, I am 100 percent positive that I have everything connected
>correctly, and the settings are correct.  Like I said, except the drives,
>the systems are EXACTLY the same.  I have made sure the CMOS settings are
>the same and everything.  I have each drive set as primary drives on their
>own cable.
>
>        I don't know if what I have just said makes any sense, but hope
someone
>can help me.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Wayne Rowlinson


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