Problem finding ntoskrnl.exe on boot.

I've got a messy problem. I was attemping to expand the hard-disk
space on my mom's computer by adding a second hard disk. My
sequence of actions was as follow:

1. I copied the bootable Windows 2000 partition (C:) from the
old 80GB hard disk to the new 160GB hard disk, using
Symantec Partition Magic 8.
2. I changed the drive letter of C: to N:
3. I gave the new partition drive letter C:
4. I swapped disks, so that the 160GB disk (containing the
new partition, now labled C:) is the first hard disk.
5. I made C: the active partition.

System should now boot from C:, right?

Wrong.

If I leave both hard disks attached to the IDE cable,
I get a menu allowing me to choose between "Windows 2000"
and "Windows 2000 #1". If I choose "Windows 2000", the
system boots from drive N: on the second hard disk! If
I choose "Windows 2000 #1", I get "system cannot boot due
to a hardware configuration error".

If I remove the second hard disk (with bootable partition
N: on it) from the IDE cable, I get "Cannot find ntoskrnl.exe.
This file is missing or corrupt."

However, the file is NOT missing or corrupt. If I boot from
drive N: and do an FC between N:\WINNT\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
and C:\WINNT\system32\ntoskrnl.exe , I get "no differences
encountered". So the kernel is fine... but for some reason
it's unaccessable on boot.

I suspect that the registry on drive C: is corrupted somehow.
Specifically, I very much suspect that Partition Magic's
"Drive Mapper" program set the drive letters in the drive
C: registry to something bogus. The bootloader is probably
now looking for K:\WINNT\system32\ntoskrnl.exe or some damn
such thing, and of course not finding it.

So the question is, is there any way to edit the registry on
drive C: ? Running regedit.exe won't help, because no matter
which copy of regedit I run (the one on C: or the one on N:)
it always edits the registry on drive N:. How can I edit a
registry other than the currently-booted one?

(Yes, the possibility has occurred to me that the problem lies
elsewhere altogether, such as maybe the motherboard does not
fully support 160GB HDs; many older MBs don't. However,
I still need to know what is in the C: registry, and I don't
know how to get at it.)

--
Robbie Hatley
Tustin, CA, USA
email: lonewolfintj at pacbell dot net
web: home dot pacbell dot net slant earnur slant


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