Re: Boot from D: when C: does not exist

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

PS: Did you set your D: drive as a Primary Partition or is there only an Extended Partition on the disk? The System files ntldr, NTDETECT.COM & boot.ini need to be on an Primary Active partition, you can locate the operating system on a logical drive in an extended partition but you need an Active partition to boot the operating system.

John

John John (MVP) wrote:

It will work if you do it properly. Three things to check:

1- Highly unlikely, but if there is a file named NTBOOTDD.SYS in the root of the C: drive copy it too to the root of D:.

2- Make sure that the BIOS is set to boot to the correct disk.

3- Make sure that the drive has the proper required MBR and Boot Sector to boot Windows XP. Boot with the Recovery Console and issue the Fixboot and Fixmbr commands against the disk.

Does your computer have a floppy diskette?

John

MariusM wrote:


thank you for the reply
I already tried this a few weeks ago, copyed all system files from c: to d: and modified the boot.ini file to point to the correct drive...it did not work when I took out the first HDD. I'm not sure now what was the error but it's the usual when windows does not find it's system files; something like this. I also talked to a guy from microsoft support (for another matter but I asked him this also) and he said that from what he knows this does not work (boot-ing from D when C is not available). He was only a first level support or something and couldn't help me with anything anyway ;). Anyway, the error I got if I remember corectly is the same as the error you get on new notebooks or PC's whith SATA HDD whithout the AHCI BIOS setting activated.


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