Boot Sector on D drive need to move to C to merge the 2 drives

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Guest

I have a generic PC, the drive had originally been split into two drives. I
don't know how the boot sector got onto the secondary partition but I now
want to merge the two drives. Needless to say I have been unsucessful. Any
ideas?
 
Wizzarr said:
I have a generic PC, the drive had originally been split into two drives. I
don't know how the boot sector got onto the secondary partition but I now
want to merge the two drives. Needless to say I have been unsucessful. Any
ideas?
Click to expand...

I think you mean one physical drive, two partitions - yes? Because
Windows (and the boot files) is on your second partition, if you want
Windows to be on the first partition (C:\), then you will need to do a
clean install. You can delete the current partitions and create a single
new partition during the installation process. Of course, you understand
that this will remove everything currently on the hard drive so you
should back up all your data first.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html - Clean Install How-To
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Reinstalling_Windows -
What you will need on-hand

Otherwise, if everything is working fine then leave well enough alone.
There is no technical reason that Windows must be on C:\.


Malke
 
Every partition has a boot sector. Do you mean to say that the "Active"
partition has changed and that now the operating system boots on the
second partition? You can change the active partition in the Disk
Management tool. Right click on My Computer and select Manage and you
will find Disk Management there. Right click on the partition that you
want to make active and select the option to make it active.

*WARNING* If you are unsure about this you should not change the active
partition! Changing the active partition may prevent your Windows
installation from booting. If you have a floppy diskette you can create
an XP startup floppy which can be used to start Windows if the wrong
partition is made active.

To merge the two partitions without damaging the Windows installation
you need to use a third party partitioning tool like Partition Magic or
BootItNG. If you want to reinstall Windows you can do partitioning work
and delete/create partitions when you do the installation.

John
 
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