Re: The Case of the Phantom OS

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Alex Nichol (alexn.mvpdts_at_ntlworld.delete.com)
Date: 06/20/04 

Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2004 16:58:28 +0100

Ralph Hutchinson wrote:

>#1 Win98se
>#2 WinXP-1
>#3 WinXP-2
>#4 WinXP-3
>
>All of the installations boot just fine. When booted, all OS'es, with the
>exception of the one loaded, are hidden. The selected drives all show up in
>Boot Magic as being on the correct drive and partition.
>
>But here is where the mystery comes in. When booted into any of the first
>three OS'es, that drive shows up in Internet Explorer as the C: drive with
>the correct drive ID name. But when booted to the XP OS on the fourth
>drive, which should show as C: WinXP-3, it shows up as C: WinXP-2.

This can arise if you have produced #3 by cloning #2. This has left the
enumerations that were recorded in registry unchanged, and it is
actually running the #2 partition for a lot of things. Because it will
for those be using a physical position on the drive, it bypasses the
'hidden' aspect. . Boot it up, run regedit and at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Mounted Devices
delete all the entries in the right pane. Then reboot for them to be
re-enumerated. You may find that you need then to readjust a drive
letter for other drives in device management 

-- 
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K.  Alexn@mvps.D8E8L.org (remove the D8 bit)

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