Hi Brian,
Sorry it took such a long time to respond. Here are the what I found for your questions:
1. Could you use the BootIt CD to look at "View MBR". I'd expect only one named entry. Is that correct?
==Yes, it is one named entry. MBR Entry 0
2. If you still have the 40 GB HD with WinXP installed could you do the same thing. How many named entries in the MBR? One or more?
==Actually two. MBR Entry 0
Another one shows as "----, Partion 7MB Free Space"
3. While you have the 40 GB HD in the laptop, have a look in Disk Management. Are there one or more partitions in Disk 0?
==I just checked. It seems like it is only one partition in Disk 0 (I actually don't know what it would look like it is more than one partition under 'Disk Management')
The reason I checked back to my initial post today was that my laptop (after upgrading to the new HD) continues to have problem with booting up periodically. Sometime it simply didn't boot into window after many times of pushing the start button. Then I have to pop in that "BING CD" I created back to do the same procedure "Partition->View MBR->Clear Sig->Apply->restart". Then it will work again. I am really puzzled. Today I am fed up and decided to do something like using the 'old way' of image/restore (I used Ghost Clone method for the upgrade).
I happened to found this software "Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8" which is free utill 04/11-2007 at
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/hdmanager8/index I don't have the Ghost Recovery CD and my 2.5 HD enclosure is not working currently. And I don't have a floppy with my laptop either. I installed the 'Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8'. Found the option 'Create an image of the entire disk'. I am doing it now (saving to one of my external USB HD). It seems like I don't even have to have a blank USB HD to do this (though I did backup the data first). I am going to restore the image once it is done. Any comment on this software 'Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8'? I hope what I am doing sounds ok.
Thanks again, Brian.