Dual boot drive. Windows won't boot after a failed format

I have 2 Maxtor drives attached to a Maxtor ATA 133 controller card. One is
a master and the other a slave. The master drive is split into 3
partitions, drives C, D and E. C and E both have Windows XP Pro on them. I
use the copy on drive C for business, and the one on E is for my son and
grandson to play games. I have found in the past that games eventually
'mess up' computers, so this seemed to be an ideal answer. All was working
well, until my son said he was having a lot of problems with the games side.
I tried to do a system restore, but it kept saying nothing had been
restored. I then tried a repair. Even though the controller card was
acknowledging that it had a drive connected to it, I got an error message
saying Windows
couldn't find any hard drives. I moved the connection from
the controller card onto the IDE. Then windows found the drives and did the
repair to drive E, but it made no difference. I then reinstalled Windows
over the original copy on E, but it was still the same. Even the users were
still
there. So I decided to reformat the drive and start afresh. The reformat
was nearly
at the end, when it failed. Now I can't boot drive C: If I boot it
connected to the controller card, it says 'DISK BOOT FAILURE. Insert system
disk and press enter. If I try to do a setup from the CD while the disk is
on the controller card, it says 'Windows did not find any hard disk drives
installed in your computer. Make sure hard disks are powered on and
properly connected to your computer and that any disk related hardware
configuration is correct'.
If I boot it from the main IDE, it stops at 'IDE BUS MASTER ENABLED'

Please can someone help me? I have so much stuff on drive c: Obviously I
have backed up the most important files, but it is such a large hard drive
that there is a lot of stuff I couldn't back up.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks

Margaret
Royal Leamington Spa
UK

I would think you should have a set-up floppy disk for your maxtor ATA 133
controller, when you have booted from the CD it will ask to press F2 (I
think) for 3rd party drivers. This may enable you to run set-up on you
faster controller.
Just wondering how do you boot between the 2 OS.

best of luck
Neil
"Margaret Simpson" <teragram@btopenworld.com> wrote in message
news:bnlvb4$bf8$1@sparta.btinternet.com...

> I have 2 Maxtor drives attached to a Maxtor ATA 133 controller card. One

is

> a master and the other a slave. The master drive is split into 3
> partitions, drives C, D and E. C and E both have Windows XP Pro on them.

I

> use the copy on drive C for business, and the one on E is for my son and
> grandson to play games. I have found in the past that games eventually
> 'mess up' computers, so this seemed to be an ideal answer. All was

working

> well, until my son said he was having a lot of problems with the games

side.

> I tried to do a system restore, but it kept saying nothing had been
> restored. I then tried a repair. Even though the controller card was
> acknowledging that it had a drive connected to it, I got an error message
> saying Windows
> couldn't find any hard drives. I moved the connection from
> the controller card onto the IDE. Then windows found the drives and did

the

> repair to drive E, but it made no difference. I then reinstalled Windows
> over the original copy on E, but it was still the same. Even the users

were

> still
> there. So I decided to reformat the drive and start afresh. The reformat
> was nearly
> at the end, when it failed. Now I can't boot drive C: If I boot it
> connected to the controller card, it says 'DISK BOOT FAILURE. Insert

system

> disk and press enter. If I try to do a setup from the CD while the disk

is

> on the controller card, it says 'Windows did not find any hard disk drives
> installed in your computer. Make sure hard disks are powered on and
> properly connected to your computer and that any disk related hardware
> configuration is correct'.
> If I boot it from the main IDE, it stops at 'IDE BUS MASTER ENABLED'
>
> Please can someone help me? I have so much stuff on drive c: Obviously I
> have backed up the most important files, but it is such a large hard drive
> that there is a lot of stuff I couldn't back up.
>
> Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
> Thanks
>
> Margaret
> Royal Leamington Spa
> UK
>
>