Boot is on C: but Windows XP is on D:
Hello there. Trying to tidy up my home PC. I have 2 hard drives (Hitachi C: and WesternDigital D:) It appears my system boots from C: and then starts Windows XP from D: where it is correctly installed and working fine. In order to tidy it, I'd quite like to a) boot from the same drive as my Windows drive D:, and then b) rename my D: drive to C: to get it back to 'standard'. Then I'd like to reformat my C: drive and use solely as a second backup drive. My C: drive currently contains a couple of old Windows installs that got infected over the years, and I installed my current XP onto D: a couple of years ago to completely separate it from the others. Does that make sense? I have a logfile from Avast and a screenshot from Disk Management to help show you my setup if it helps? Many thanks for any advice on a course of action to just get back to booting and running Windows from C: and use D: for backups/clone whatever.
| Anhang | Größe |
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| aswmbr99.txt | 1.99 KB |
| disk_map.docx | 78.73 KB |
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OK, many thanks, I'll have a ponder...
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Hi Sleepybear,
To help with your pondering... I had exactly your problem back in 2003. GroverH is correct that the relationship between the C and D drives needs to be maintained for your system to work.
The solution I used was to create a small partition to be a replacement C drive on the XP drive which the computer sees as drive 1.This new C only need contain the few necessary boot files. Before re-booting it is necessary to edit the boot INI so that it points to drive 1 instead of drive 0.
So you would finally end up with a tiny C drive and your existing Xp installation both on drive 1. Drive 0 could then be formatted and re-used.
I am somewhat light on actual detailed steps that I followed it was after all nearly nine years ago! so I may not be able help much further.
With safety in mind you could just delete everything other than the XP boot files on the existing C drive (0) then create a new partition in the now free space for storage etc. and leave Your boot files alone.
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It is quite possible that the system drive (the one with the bootstrap to get the machine started) and boot drive (the one with the system files that comprise the OS) are separate drives. Normally, when one installs the OS, one drive is used as both system and boot drive but it doesn't have to be that way as your sytem shows. You can only straighten this out by reinstalling the os (and then all the other software too. (I know the nomenclature sound backwards but so be it, the machine bootstraps form the system drive and the OS system in onthe boot drive. Usually they are one in the same drive and the distinction matters little.)
When folks clone a boot/system drive and then boot up with both drives on the machine, xp would sometimes treat one as system and the other as boot, and your programs then could get all wonky.
I'd leave things alone. Someday you'll upgrade to w7 or w8 and this will all be a vague memory. Meanwhile, your machine works, and there's a lot to be said for that.
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Many thanks GroverH/xpilot/Scott.
On reflection, think I'll go with Scott's suggestion. It's the voice of reason and strikes a chord of common sense - love the sentiment about what we worry about today is all but water under the bridge a short while later and we wonder why we were worried about it in the first place. I didn't know how easy/difficult it might be is all, but as Scott says, one day this will all be a vague memory and an untidy system that works is better than one that doesn't, and XP support is being dropped in 2014 I understand anyway. Its probably about time I moved on in fairness! So one last thought. Instead of upgrading to W7 or W8 or whatever in the future, whats the general opinion about going over to Ubuntu? Open source, resist the Microsoft monolith, way less security/virus stuff to worry about? Appreciate the comments guys, impressed with the forum.
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