Today I needed to put a floppy drive into my computer to copy some files on it for another computer. (sata drivers needed during winxp install on a shuttle mini computer) I plugged in one I got from my campus IT department, unplugged one of my hard drives for power to the floppy (I am running ide 3 drives with powered sata converters) and booted up into the BIOS. In there I enabled the floppy disk drive in the main bios menu and restarted. (come to think of it, I didn’t enable the on drive FDD controller, maybe that has something to do with it). When the computer restarted it went though the boot process, got to checking the cd drives for bootable discs, then said the error lading operating system. I figured I must have unplugged the hard drive with the operating system installed on it, so I changed it and rebooted. Got the same error. So I took out the floppy, changed the bios back to what it was and rebooted. I got the same error message and screamed.
 
So what the hell is going on? I put in my xp cd, booted off of it and tried to get to the recovery console so I could at least copy off EVERYTHING to another spare drive before I reformat, but, it got right before that part and said it was examining the drive. Sat there for a while, then loaded up the screen where I can select which drive I want to install the operating system, partition, and/or format. Oddly the drive show up as two partitions, with 0 free space and the drive letters are :-
 
I’m crapping my pants here.
 
My hard drives were 3 different drives, all as dynamic discs, ide with sata converters connected to sata ports on the hard drive. They all have about 2 partitions on each.
 
I searched google and microsofts site and this is what they said about the error:
 
SYMPTOMS
When you restart your computer after the file-copy portion of Windows XP Setup, you may receive the following error message:
Error loading operating system
CAUSE
This issue may occur if your computer BIOS does not correctly manage or support the capacity of the hard disk on which you are installing Windows XP.
RESOLUTION
Warning This article contains steps that may involve changing your BIOS or complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) settings or that may require you to make physical changes to your computer hardware. Incorrect changes to the BIOS of your computer may create serious problems. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems that result from changes to your BIOS can be resolved. Change your BIOS settings at your own risk. If you need help with any of these steps, contact your hardware manufacturer and note that making either hardware or BIOS changes to your computer may invalidate your warranty. If you do not want to make hardware changes to your computer, you can take your computer to a repair center
 
 
 
So yeah, WTF. I may go home tomorrow and see if I can plug the drives into my mothers computer and retrieve any of the data.
 
 
:-(
 
 
Oh yeah, Gigabit amd nforce 3 mobo, 3 ide hardrives with sata converters, windows xp pro sp2, 2 ide dvd drives... I think thats the only info anyone would need really.