Computer can't find C: Drive

[Senefelder]

Briefly: Dell Dimension XPS R400, XP Professional. Had 3 hard drives, C: 40 Gig, D: 60, R: (backup) 80. Got new 160 Gig external USB2 to use as backup, so copied backups to new drive from 80, used Acronis True Image to copy D: to 80 from 60, then True Image to transfer C: from 40 to 60, which was changed to active, jumpered to Master and moved to PM position on cable, leaving PS empty. Computer rebooted no problem, and still does.

BUT, on a fresh boot in the morning, I always get an error saying "MBR Error 1 - press any key to boot from floppy." Obviously, computer is looking at wrong drive. Boot order is correct - hard drive, CD-ROM, removeable media, network. BUT, under Hard Drive heading further down in Setup, the Western Digital C: drive (60 Gig) is always listed as No. 4 drive, after all others, including my internal Jaz drive. I move it up to be number 1 and the computer boots, reboots, no problem. Next morning, SAME THING - C: drive is back to #4.

What am I doing wrong, folks? Is the fact that PS is empty contributing to this? CMOS battery seems okay. HELP!

[KHT]

Try running the recovery console and use the "fixmbr" command.

[Senefelder]

No, there is nothing wrong with the MBR. The reason I get that error is that the computer keeps looking for the boot disk and cannot find it, so looks for a MBR on the wrong disk. The answer was that I had a Western Digital drive alone on a cable and jumpered as Master, when it should have been jumpered as Single. Removed the jumper, and now all is well. Thanks for trying.

[glc]

If you are using 80 wire Ultra ATA cables or the original Dell cables, you should be using Cable Select, not master/slave jumpering.