Re: Changing the system disk after install

"John John (MVP)" <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx> écrivait
news:udX39JQtIHA.1436@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Doum wrote:
Andy <1@xxx> écrivait
news:ib3i24dsau24lr0ghh255gh38d8tva42a7@xxxxxxx:


On Mon, 12 May 2008 16:06:27 -0400, "Scott S" <scott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard
drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.

when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?


Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.

We should make sure that we are on the same page and that we use
the same terms else we will all be hopelessly confused! The Microsoft
nomenclature defines the following:

*Boot Partition*
The boot partition contains the Windows operating system and its
support files. By default, the Windows operating system files are in
the WINDOWS folder, and the supporting files are in the
WINDOWS\System32 folder. The boot partition can be, but does not have
to be, the same as the system partition. There will be one, and only
one, system partition, but there will be one boot partition for each
operating system in a multi-boot system.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*System Partition*
The system partition refers to the disk volume that contains the
hardware-specific files that are needed to start Windows, such as
Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com. The system partition can be, but
does not have to be, the same volume as the boot partition.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John



I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

I have an old motherboard with integrated ATA33 and ATA66 IDE
controllers, I've added a PCI ATA133 controller. There is 1x4.3GB HD
plugged to the ATA33, there was 1x20GB (UDMA4) on the ATA66 and a few
others UDMA5 & 6 on the ATA133.

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C:), XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D:).
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

I restarded with the XP CD and the installation would see that disk as
D:, so I reformatted and reinstalled XP and everything is OK.

That's why I thought that the OP problem was similar to mine.

My apology if I confused someone.
Doum

.

Relevant Pages

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