hardisk not detected

When you refer to a repair of 7 what type of repair were you trying? Did you go into the repair tools to run the Startup repair tool?

If the XP drive proceeds the 7 drive as far as which sata port the drive is plugged into the repair tool may have replaced the XP mbr entries. The XP drive was then made unbootable where now you would need to unplug both the 40gb ide drive like it sounds as well as the 250gb drive 7 was installed to.

Since IDE will be seen first by any Windows repair tool or installer taking priority over sata that would need to be unplugged. Then you boot from the XP install cd and press the R for Recovery Console option to reach the command prompt type window where you enter the "Fixmbr" and "Fixboot" commands after typing "scan OS".

Once the XP install is detected the boot information will be rewritten where you then see the "boot sector written successfully" type message. If XP was a stand alone install where the boot files for XP are on the 160gb you should be able to boot into XP without further problem.

You may want to go over the guide for dual booting 7 with XP which goes into some of this. Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

forseven,

HOW TO POST A SNAPSHOT OF DISK MANAGEMENT DISPLAY
Run disk management:
WIN | type DISKMGMT.MSC | ENTER
WIN=key with Microsoft logo on top.


Maximize the output of Disk Management:
ALT-Spacebar key combo | X key (selects Maximize) |
Drag the field separators (such as between Status and Capacity) to show entire field.


Make a snapshot:
WIN | type SNIPPING | ENTER | New
Drag the cursor around the area you want to snip.
File | Save as | select save location and name | Save


Post the snapshot:
Post a File or Screenshot in Seven Forums

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You will likely see the 40gb ide drive on top above the 160gb(if plugged into Sata Port #1) where XP is installed followed by the 250gb 7 is on if the 250gb was plugged into Sata port #2, 3, 4, offsetting it.

In the bios setup you can move one drive to the top of the list of drives in the boot order to make one the default boot device and edit the 7 BCD(boot configuration) to add an entry for XP if you haven't seen that done already. The default OS is then set either by the EasyBCD program you would use or by the boot tab in the 7 msconfig utility.

That was one reason for posting the dual boot guide before unless you prefer selecting the drive by way of the boot device menu at post time. Another guide for repair of the XP boot information can be seen at How to Repair Boot Manager in XP | eHow.com

That will take you through each step of booting up with the XP cd and entering the Recovery Console after either setting the optical drive as the default boot device or pressing the assigned F key(preferred rather then extra trips into the bios) to bring up the boot device menu.

Different makes and models of boards will tend to use different bios programming like Award, Phonix, AMI where it may F4, F8, F11, or F12 for the boot menu.

You'll notice the 160gb must be plugged into the first sata port on the board while the boot order was set for the 250gb where the only boot files are found. Apparently if you installed XP first but the 250gb was seen as the first drive the XP boot files went onto the 250gb leaving the 160gb unbootable on it's own.

Later if you did install 7 after XP you would have seen the boot option for "previous version of Windows" when starting up. Once you unplugged the 250gb and then booting into XP you got lost fast since there wasn't any boot loader and mbr entries to be found on the 160gb.

For seeing the XP made bootable at this time you can try the command promt options for expanding boot files from the XP cd, copying the boot.ini file over from the 7 drive if discovered there along with the live visit to the Recovery console afterwards for the Fixmbr and Fixboot commands, or the last option of going through the motions of reinstalling XP but select the R for repair of existing installation option rather then seeing the present install removed and replaced.

If you find the boot.ini and copy it over to the XP drive you will need to edit it in order to change the location of the XP installation. It will likely be "rdisk(1)partition(1)" as seen from the 7 drive while there it would be "rdisk(0)partition(1)" as one example until you can find that file and edit it with NotePad by a simply double click and paste what shows in your reply.

The repair with the 7 dvd obviously replaced the XP boot entries if they had been present on the 250gb drive 7 is presently on. Check the root of the 7 drive there to see if that was the case. Meanwhile pending a cleaning of the host boot drive as well as testing an image backup you can see how it looks when two OS drives both have a set of boot files present.

When going to OS two separate drives here I always unplug the second when installing on the first or unplug the first when installing to the second. This isolates one drive from anything done with the other.

From there I can then edit the boot configuration if wanting to or simply select which drive will be booted when pressing the designated F key to bring up the boot device menu. Once the default drive following the unplugging and replugging of either OS drive I never need to go back in to change anything there since the boot device menu or edited boot loader will see the OS selection made there.

With a fresh install of XP if you decide to go that far to correct the booting problem you would unplug the 40gb and 250gb to avoid effecting the 7 mbr as well as not seeing any XP boot files end up there or on the 40gb drive. Once XP is back on and the other two drives are plugged back in again you can copy the XP boot files over to the 7 drive and see XP added in as a second OS.

That will bring you right back to the boot.ini file again however since the copy then on the 7 drive will need an edit to correct the information in it to point at the correct drive where XP is installed. It's not any difficult task but does need to be attended to in order to see XP load when selecting the boot option for it while 7 starts up.

Once you have edited the 7 BCD and have the boot.ini and ntldr files copied over from the root of the XP drive you can then set the 7 drive as the default boot device in the bios setup. You can also set the default OS while booted in 7 with the EasyBCD program used to edit the new XP entry in or in the boot tab of the msconfig utility.

The first thing now however is tending to the XP boot information. To prevent any mbr problem with the 7 drive simply unplug the 250gb while following the steps seen in the eHow guide there. If followed correctly once you replug the 7 drive back in you should be able to choose which Windows version you want to boot into and watch it load right up for you.