I have new motherboard with mostly SATA controllers and only one IDE. I need to have two DVD drives connected, so, my HDDs are all SATA.

I'm having a problem with installing Vista whereby installation won't boot (it hangs) if there is no IDE HD connected to the system. As long as I plug in an IDE harddrive, the installation will boot and I can install Vista to a partition on the SATA drive which is also connected.

The problem is, Vista puts the boot information on the IDE drive (I guess because the IDE drives are enumerated first by the BIOS?). So if I subsequently remove that drive to reconnect my DVD drives, on boot I get "NTLDR is missing." :-/

I'm hoping there would be a way to copy the boot record from my old drive (the IDE one) to my new one. Can Boot Pro accomplish something like this?

Thanks for suggestions!!

Hi joeonsunset and welcome to PROnetworks. Vista will place the boot system files on the drive/partition that is marked as the system drive during installation.

Adding and removing a PATA drive will affect which is the system drive and unplugging and replugging the system drive will cause boot failure.

You can try to copy the folder Boot and the file bootmgr to the SATA drive which is set as the system drive when the PATA drive is unplugged and you may then have to run Startup Repair by booting to the Vista DVD and then selecting Repair at the bottom left of the "Install now" screen. However, when you replug the PATA drive you will probably have to do that again. Maybe its worth a try.

It's beyond the scope of VistaBootPRO to reset the boot system drive.

Thanks very much for your really informative reply! If I weren't having this hanging install problem when there's no PATA HD connected, I would be fine. I don't suppose anybody has heard of anything like that...

I will try your suggestion. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to live without one of my DVD burners!

Thanks again.