Help! I'm starting to get desperate!

[llstuber]

Hello everyone. Boy, do I have a problem! I've been working on this problem since yesterday morning and I'm not having any luck.
I am running the following system: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1
AMD Athlon XP, 1100 MHz (BIOS Phoenix AwardBIOS)
Asus MB (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 3 DDR DIMM, Dual LAN, IEEE-139
RADEON 9200 (128 MB)3D Accelerator
Creative SB SB0350 Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card
2 - 120 Seagate Barracuda SATA hard drives (NTFS partition)
50X CD-Rom; DVD 24x/16x/32x burner.

I went to install an IDE PATA drive (Samsung 250gb)as a slave drive today and like a dummy I forgot to change the boot sequence and it tried to read the PATA drive first before the C (SATA) drive. I went back into the BIOS and changed it but all I get now is the ''PXI E61 : media test failure error, check cables'' and then it tells me ''DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER''. It reads both SATA drives before it hits the PXI boot, as Primary drive and Secondary drive, respectively, then does it's error routine. I have tried all the different boot settings, I have taken the CMOS battery out and have tried all the other cures suggested on a dozen different forums (but none involving SATA drives. Go figure.), with the exception of re-installing XP. I downloaded Seagate's disk utility program, SeaTools Desktop, and tried all the diagnostics with the exception the Full Diagnostics test. When I run the File Structure Test on both drives, it tells me the following errors were found: ''Partition 1 (NTFS (120 GB) Result: Failed with critical Errors. The following errors were found while scanning the volume: - One or more errors were found in the index.''
When I run the Quick Diagnostic it tells me that all the tests, ie: cable test, buffer test, SMART check, etc., were all good.
When the Seagate floppy disk program does it's initial startup, it reads the C drive as bootable, but it won't. I've run a Full Diagnostic off the Seagate floppy disk and everything passed! I will have to try to re-install XP next but I would almost bet it's a BIOS setting that needs changing but I'll be darned if I can find it. I've changed them all. I can't remember that if I try to fix the partition on my SATA's if it will format the discs. Formatting the SATA's is out of the question as I have way too much info on the drives to lose. If I have to I would even be willing to put the new PATA drive in and make it the C drive but I don't think I need to go that far. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
PS: I'm using my older computer to post this.

[peaz]

Sounds like the Boot sector is corrupted.

The only way to fix it is to 'repair' reinstall winxp over the existing installation. THat should fix the boot sector of the booting hard drive.

[Adrian Wong]

You can also choose to boot up using the Windows XP boot disk and use the fixmbr and fixboot commands to try repairing the boot sector.