Re: New install of XP on a SATA card

Roscoe P Pendoscoe wrote:
Had a disk going bad and went and purchased new one and clone failed
and I had the OS split between the C: and D: drives and limping along
with many functions and programs unavailable. It was usable though for
my most important daily use.

I installed a new drive on a SATA card and installed XP on there. It
is designated G: and has now given me 2 boot choices. The old XP with
issues and the new clean one.

I want to pull the 2 old drives from the machine.

Will XP then make the new XP on G: my C: drive automatically and rid
the dual boot choice?

No, the Windows XP installation on G:\ will not boot at all after you remove the old System Drive. You would have to change your G:\ drive so that it is also the System partition, as it is now it is only the Boot partition. The drive letter of the Windows installation will not and *must not* change, it must always retain the drive letter assigned to it when it was installed. If you want to change the G:\ designation to C:\ you must reinstall Windows, remove the old disk(s) and reinstall Windows on the SATA drive. If you want to keep the Windows installation on G:\ and make it the System partition post again and let us know of your intentions, also tell us if the computer has a floppy diskette.

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.

(This is your current G:\ drive)

*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.

(This is most likely your C:\ drive)

John

.

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