Question : Switching from PATA to SATA Windows Won't Start

  I cloned my hard drive (XP Professional W/SP2) from a PATA to an SATA drive. I then put the SATA drive back in the computer and took out the PATA. Everything else is identical. XP won't start. It reboots itself.

   I was always under the impression that XP used the same IDE driver regardless of the drive being SATA or PATA. Obviously I was mistaken.

   I have BartPE and  UBCD4WIN. Surely there must be a way to simple modify the driver of reconfigure the HAL to get it to recognize the SATA drive properly isn't there? I know a repair-install will do the trick but that is too much work. Anybody have any experience doing this?

Answer : Switching from PATA to SATA Windows Won't Start

First look in BIOS. Some have an option in the for SATA Native mode. If yours does, enable that. At that point the SATA will act as a normal IDE for boot purposes. Hopefully that should get you in to Windows. Once in Windows, you can install the SATA drivers for your motherboard and hopefully change the SATA back in BIOS.