# Booting PC from Primary Slave? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2005, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934 "2005-12-16T16:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TheBoneyKingofNowhere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@TheBoneyKingofNowhere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBoneyKingofNowhere)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934/1 "2005-12-16T16:50:17Z")
Hello, I’m having some boot-up issues with my PC at work – upon loading windows, I get an error that says C:\windows\system32\riched20.dll is not a valid windows image. This is a problem I’ll have to worry about later… at the same time (today) I need a couple of MS Access Databases on an old harddrive (call it drive b)that I’ve plugged in as the Primary Slave Drive. In the BIOS, can I set the Primary Slave Drive (drive b) as the boot drive and run Windows on it that way? Or can I somehow just set drive b as the Primary Master and flip flop it with the original drive? Or do I need to manually swap the way the drives are plugged in AND reconfigure the BIOS? Thanks a million, teeming millions… ---
**Author:** ![Ponster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponster/32/17081_2.png) [@Ponster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponster)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934/2 "2005-12-16T16:57:20Z")
I guess it’ll all depend on your bios. If you can choose not only the device boot order (floopy -\> cd-rom - \> hard drive) but also the order in which the hard drives boot then it’ll work perfectly. I have an Asus motherboard and if I hold F8 while booting I can choose dynamically which hard drive I want to boot from. ---
**Author:** ![TheBoneyKingofNowhere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@TheBoneyKingofNowhere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBoneyKingofNowhere)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934/3 "2005-12-16T17:04:39Z")
Thanks Ponster, So if I boot from the “2nd” hard drive (drive b) do I need to have THAT drive listed as the Primary Master, rather than the Primary Slave? And if so, does that mean I need to swap the cords around, or can I do that in the BIOS? ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934/4 "2005-12-16T17:12:16Z")
If you just want to boot from the old drive a few times, you can just change the BIOS boot order. It won’t change the master/slave relationship but that’s Ok because you can boot from a slave too. If you want to make a long-term change, you will have to open the computer, switch the mast/slave jumpers on both drives, and switch the cable position. That will change the master/slave relatioship on the computer. All of this assumes that you have a bootable copy of Windows on your old drive. You may have some driver issues too if the old drive has never booted this computer before. ---
**Author:** ![kinoons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a698b9/32.png) [@kinoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kinoons)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2005, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/booting-pc-from-primary-slave/335934/5 "2005-12-17T01:36:21Z")
Pardon me taking the chance to offer a differing opinon, but I understood that the master/slave jumper only tells the BIOS that there are two devices on the IDE controller in question. Occasionally the BOIS lets you choose to boot to HDD 1, 2 or such. IF not, FDISK (or similar program in later versions of windows) is what determines drive order for boot. Also, it should be noted that a second drive that contains only data will not be bootable without some sort of OS on it.