Moving Operating System

[Guest]

If you choose to respond, please keep in mind I am new to all this.

I bought a new hard drive and did a fresh installation of XP Professional.
For whatever reason, I had some errors in the install. However, I was able to
complete the install. Not knowing how those errors would affect my computer,
I decided to install again into the larger partition I had hoped to use
strictly for data. I was successful and have been happily using my system for
a while now.

Recently my computer gets bogged down during startup. It does not bog does
as badly when I run off the first C:/ drive installation, only the second E:/
drive install. I am not sure if that has to do with the bios, the dual boot
setup, or the many windows updates (SP2, etc.) that I have installed on the
E:/ drive.

I should stop here and a asks for suggestions. Feel free to base your
comments just on the problem above as the slow boot up is the reason for my
question. But I also have an idea of my own. So now I continue...

I would like to move my operating system from E:/ to C:/. Why? because of
all the updates I do not want to go through again. Also, I would like to move
my program files into the C:/ drive (which I have not been doing although
that was my original intent). This is when I encounter problem number 2. When
I first did the partition, I thought I would only need 1GB for the operating
system. Bad assumption as now my WINDOWS folder contains 3GB+ (probably due
to updates). I have unallocated hard drive space. I want to add this
unallocated space to my C:/ drive and then just move my WINDOWS folder, et
al. This does not seem possible. And I cannot delete and/or repartition my
C:/ drive because it is the system drive. Thoughts?

 

[DL]

1) You cannot move programs to your second win installation - reason being
an installation of a program scatters files & registry entries in many
locations that you cannot reconcile.
2) Being new, my reccomendation would be, once you have backed up all your
data, to start over with a clean installation, by deleting all Partitions,
then creating a new single partition. Then install your motherboard & other
drivers - NOT from winupdate - update win

If you feel you have to have two partitions your win partition should be
about 20gb, even with this you would need to custom install apps so that
they are installed on the correct partition. You would also need to move My
Documents.

PC's often get bogged down by malaware/trojans - which are completely
different to Virus and may not be detected by an AV app. Using default, or
the wrong drivers also causes problems. Low disk space is also a cause

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input. I was, however, hoping to avoid backing up my system
and starting fresh.

I have 21GBs unallocated. Is it possible to install from CD, delete the old
C:/ system drive and create a new partition that encompasses all of my
unallocated space and the space currently utilized by my C:/? I would then be
free to start installing programs onto the C:/ drive while leaving data on my
E:/ drive.

If I do this, will I still be able to boot through my E:/ (boot) drive? The
reinstall will delete and then recreate those necessary files upon which the
E:/ (boot) drive relies (e.g. ntdlr, etc.) which are currently located on my
C:/ drive, will this prove to be problematic?

More to the point, as long as I am only reformatting the C:/ drive, will I
be able to access the programs and files located on the E:/ drive?

Thanks!

 

[DL]

If C was your origonal drive, and you then created a second win install on
E, then by deleting C and repartitioning to use all free space you will lose
the ability of the dual boot, unless you manually edit the boot ini file to
add the reference to E:\Win
Deleteing C partition will not impact on data on E You can still acces data
on E from C:\Win though you may have to take ownership depending on where
the data is stored.

PS the Bios has allmost certainly nothing to do with your problems, if you
have been fiddling with bios, enter Bios setup and reset it to defaults.

 

[Guest]

This solution sounds like it will be serviceable. Two last questions.

(1) Will I be able to access programs on the E:/ drive even though that
operating system is no longer operable? (you mentioned data would be
accessible, just wanted to be clear)

(2) Is there a safe way to remove the operating system on the E:/ drive
without affecting the programs on this drive? (probably no, but had to ask.)

Thanks

 

[DL]

1) If E is not bootable the programs will not function (Some very simple
ones will)
2) No, programs will have to be reinstalled whilst booted from C

 

[Poprivet]

IMO you're taking a BIG chance on losing everything if your "requirement" is
to not back up anything. At least back up all of your DATA; the stuff you
created with the programs. Email, Favorites, .doc, .rtf, .txt, etc etc etc;
any file you yourself saved to disk.
You're in a very "iffy" case there. Back the stuff up and reinstall is
going to ve faster and much more reliable w/r to ending up with a well
operating system, IMO.

Pop`

 

[DL]

I agree

IMO you're taking a BIG chance on losing everything if your "requirement"
is to not back up anything. At least back up all of your DATA; the stuff
you created with the programs. Email, Favorites, .doc, .rtf, .txt, etc
etc etc; any file you yourself saved to disk.
You're in a very "iffy" case there. Back the stuff up and reinstall is
going to ve faster and much more reliable w/r to ending up with a well
operating system, IMO.

Pop`