Master Boot record help!

[MonkMachine]

I'll start from the top, recently I tried to install mac OSX on my second hard drive(IDE). I had XP installed on my SATA hard drive which had all my music and videos which I didn't want to loose. installed mac OSX and it ran fine, but I could no longer could boot into windows, I had to then format the OSX disk(IDE) and install windows onto my IDE drive, after install I couldn't get it to boot but I changed the hard disk boot order in my bios(to the IDE drive) and it booted. Then rescued my music etc by puting it on the IDE drive. Formatted my Sata hard drive and installed windows, all went fine. My problem is this when I change the boot order in my Bios (i.e. change the first boot device to my sata drive) it doesn't boot, does this mean my Master Boot record is on my IDE drive? Is there anyway to get it onto my Sata hard drive as I want to have another attempt at installing OSX, but I cant because I cant format my IDE drive if it has the Master boot record.

P.S. New to all this so not sure it is to do with the MBR but assume it is.
Sorry if Im not allowed to post this in here, but thought someone might be able to help. Or any experience with installing OSX.

[lil_jimmy_norton]

Re: Master Boot record help!

Try going into recovery console and running FIXMBR

[MonkMachine]

Re: Master Boot record help!

Try going into recovery console and running FIXMBR

Sorry if I didn't explain very well

I have 2 versions of XP Home on my system,
The one on my IDE drive I installed first, the second version on my sata, but my MBR is on my IDE and I want to format it(IDE) but I think if I do I won't be able to boot. Is there anyway to transfer it? I tried just copying the file over but that didn't work.

[Impurify]

Re: Master Boot record help!

could be messy, i'd imagine you'd have to edit the boot.ini file and transfer it over to your SATA, read this article, will probablly give you a better idea. (haven't read it myself, but might point ya in the right direction)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot.ini

[K8T]

Re: Master Boot record help!

Ususally when you have 2 HDD's with 2 dif OS installed on them and you try and transfur files from for example... a Windows XP OS HDD to a Mac OS HDD it stuffs up, thats why I partition my OS HDD into 2 partitions so 1 for the OS and the other for files that I dont want to lose etc.... so if I have to reformat I dont lose any music or have to mess arround with transfuring files between to HDD's even though I have another HDD which is full of crap too.