Changing the system disk after install

[Scott S]

I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2 hard
drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The problem is
windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard drive is listed as
the system disk in the device manager and C: is the boot drive.

when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that windows is
installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot) drive?

 

[DL]

Disconnect the drive you dont want to use, adjust drive jumpers on the
remaining drive to master, assuming its ide. Clean reinstall winxp, update &
ensure its ok. Shutdown PC, reconnect other drive as slave

 

[Big Al]

Disconnect the drive you dont want to use, adjust drive jumpers on the
remaining drive to master, assuming its ide. Clean reinstall winxp, update &
ensure its ok. Shutdown PC, reconnect other drive as slave

And when you start the load make sure it says C: on the XP install
screen. like http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPpro5setup.jpg

 

[John John (MVP)]

It's unlikely that the second hard disk is the System disk if you just
formated it, where are the following files:

boot.ini
ntldr
NTDETECT.COM

These files *always* reside in the root folder of the System partition.

John

 

[Andy]

I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2 hard
drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The problem is
windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard drive is listed as
the system disk in the device manager and C: is the boot drive.

when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that windows is
installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot) drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.

 

[Scott S]

They are both SATA drives and I did the clean install on the primary SATA
drive.
The system files are located on both drives. I tried a fixmbr and this did
not solve the problem.

 

[Doum]

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.

I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to "F:\Windows"
in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would take days. It's
a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

....Unless there are some kind of third party registry editor that would
include some automatic "search and replace" function, but I didn't search
for that because I thought that could cause more damages.

I had a similar issue and XP was very slow to boot with lots of error
messages caused by the wrong references in the registry.

HTH
Doum

 

[John John (MVP)]

I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to "F:\Windows"
in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would take days. It's
a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another and
the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is booted,
that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System drive.

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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John

 

[Doum]

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.

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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John

I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

I have an old motherboard with integrated ATA33 and ATA66 IDE
controllers, I've added a PCI ATA133 controller. There is 1x4.3GB HD
plugged to the ATA33, there was 1x20GB (UDMA4) on the ATA66 and a few
others UDMA5 & 6 on the ATA133.

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

I restarded with the XP CD and the installation would see that disk as
D:, so I reformatted and reinstalled XP and everything is OK.

That's why I thought that the OP problem was similar to mine.

My apology if I confused someone.
Doum

 

[John John (MVP)]

"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.

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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John

I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[Anna]

I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

First of all my apologies to the OP (Scott) if we're going off on a slight
tangent here and not being responsive to his query (problem). Hopefully one
or more of the responses he's already rec'd have resolved his problem. But
if not, I trust we'll hear from him again.

What possibly occurred in Doum's case was that after he/she cloned the
contents of his/her 20 GB HDD containing the XP OS to another 20 GB HDD,
he/she uninstalled that "destination" HDD (the recipient of the clone) from
the system. What he *should* have done prior to uninstalling the drive from
the system was to (temporarily) disconnect the "source" HDD from the system
*immediately* following the successful (we'll assume it was successful)
disk-cloning operation and boot directly to the newly-cloned HDD. Assuming
that boot went without incident and that newly-cloned HDD apparently
functioned without any problems, he/she then could have uninstalled that
latter HDD from the system, reconnected the original source HDD, and
continue to work with that HDD (presuming that's what he/she wanted to do).

I have the feeling - and perhaps Doum can correct me if I'm wrong about
this - that immediately following the disk-cloning operation, *both* HDDs,
i.e., the source & destination disks, were connected and the system booted.
Under those circumstances there would be a normal boot to the source HDD. It
was only at some later point that Doum uninstalled the newly-cloned HDD from
his/her system. Am I correct about this Doum?

If the scenario was as I have surmised, it's quite possible the newly-cloned
HDD would not boot at some later time even when connected as the sole
primary drive in the system. Assuming the original source HDD was still
functional, i.e., non-defective, and of course still retained the system
(boot) files, e.g., Ntldr, etc., the system would boot as long as *both*
HDDs were connected, however, that newly-cloned HDD would be assigned a
non-C: drive letter. (Moving the system (boot) files from the previous
source HDD to the newly-cloned HDD would not resolve the problem).

Let me emphasize that in the *majority* of cases where a disk-cloning
operation followed the scenario I've described above, the problem I've
indicated did *not* occur. That is to say, it didn't seem to matter whether
following the disk-cloning operation the initial boot to the source HDD was
made while the destination HDD (the recipient of the clone) was still
connected. The cloned HDD would subsequently boot & function properly
thereafter with a C: drive letter assignment whether or not another HDD was
also connected in the system at the time. But we did experience this problem
in a significant number of cases involving major disk-cloning programs such
as Symantec's Ghost, Acronis True Image, as well as others. Thus, our
recommendation as stated above.

Many commentators have pointed to the MS KB article that John has mentioned
to resolve the problem when it occurred. All I can tell you is that it never
worked for us assuming the problem arose based upon the scenario I've
described above.

I might mention in closing that the problem we've been discussing has
*never* occurred while using the Casper 4 program - the disk-cloning program
that we highly recommend. We've been using that program for about two years
now and that problem has never arisen in all our tests in which we tried to
duplicate the problem.
Anna

 

[John John (MVP)]

Many commentators have pointed to the MS KB article that John has mentioned
to resolve the problem when it occurred. All I can tell you is that it never
worked for us assuming the problem arose based upon the scenario I've
described above.

I can assure you that it has worked for us in many instances! Another
fix is to use a Windows 98 setup disk and rewrite the MBR with the fdisk
/mbr command, this will rewrite the disk signature an invalidate the
Mount Manager database. It is no secret why the drive letter problem
occurs with some cloning utilities, it can occur because both hard disks
have the same signatures, as a "true" clone would. If the parent disk
remains in the computer the fix is to make sure that any hard disks on
the computer don't have the same signature, in the case of Doum the MS
fix would certainly have worked because the original (parent) disk with
an identical signature had failed and was removed from the computer, the
MS article pointed to would have fixed the problem.

John

 

[Scott S]

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked to,
this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive from
one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I actually
tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a bit easier to
explain...

Windows Device Manager:

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr, Boot.ini,
and Ntdetect.com.
E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this problem.

Any suggestions would be great.

Doum wrote:

Andy <[email protected]> écrivait


I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John

I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[Doum]

I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant
but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66)
(D. After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in
XP) and cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5)
plugged on the PCI controller and removed that drive from the
system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller.
It was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came
up, the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG
didn't work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and
found that all the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to
change the letter "H" to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't
let me change the system drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by
editing the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

First of all my apologies to the OP (Scott) if we're going off on a
slight tangent here and not being responsive to his query (problem).
Hopefully one or more of the responses he's already rec'd have
resolved his problem. But if not, I trust we'll hear from him again.

What possibly occurred in Doum's case was that after he/she cloned the
contents of his/her 20 GB HDD containing the XP OS to another 20 GB
HDD, he/she uninstalled that "destination" HDD (the recipient of the
clone) from the system. What he *should* have done prior to
uninstalling the drive from the system was to (temporarily) disconnect
the "source" HDD from the system *immediately* following the
successful (we'll assume it was successful) disk-cloning operation and
boot directly to the newly-cloned HDD. Assuming that boot went without
incident and that newly-cloned HDD apparently functioned without any
problems, he/she then could have uninstalled that latter HDD from the
system, reconnected the original source HDD, and continue to work with
that HDD (presuming that's what he/she wanted to do).

I have the feeling - and perhaps Doum can correct me if I'm wrong
about this - that immediately following the disk-cloning operation,
*both* HDDs, i.e., the source & destination disks, were connected and
the system booted. Under those circumstances there would be a normal
boot to the source HDD. It was only at some later point that Doum
uninstalled the newly-cloned HDD from his/her system. Am I correct
about this Doum?

Anna

Hello

After the cloning, Ghost restarted the computer automatically and I let
it go, after that I shut it down immediatly and removed the destination
drive. So you're right but it stayed there only one boot cycle.

The NTLDR, BOOT.INI, etc. files are not on that disk, it's a double-boot
system with WinME, so those files are on the WinME disk.

I didn't come here to try to solve the problem at that time because I had
no internet access while I was trying to solve the issue.

Thanks to you and John for these infos, I will save them for later use;
with an old system, I might need them sooner than later. (BTW, I am a
"he")

My apology to the OP for hijacking his thread.

Doum

 

[John John (MVP)]

You don't want to and you should never change the boot volume letter
from it's assigned installation letter, like Doum said earlier the
registry is full of entries that point to the drive letter onto which
Windows was installed, Windows must always retain its originally
assigned drive letter, the article mentioned earlier is only to be used
to restore the drive letter to its original assignment, in your case it
*must* retain the C: designation.

Before going in too deep you should first go in the BIOS and make sure
that the desired drive is set to be the first hard drive in the boot
order, when the computer boots it should boot to the drive where Windows
is installed. Save the BIOS changes and see if Windows will boot, that
may be all that is needed. If Windows doesn't boot return the boot
order to the second drive and post again.

John

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked to,
this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive from
one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I actually
tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a bit easier to
explain...

Windows Device Manager:

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr, Boot.ini,
and Ntdetect.com.
E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this problem.

Any suggestions would be great.

Doum wrote:

"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait

Doum wrote:


Andy <[email protected]> écrivait



I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John


I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[Scott S]

No the Bios is set fine, that is the 1st thing that I checked, if I switch
it to the 2nd Drive windows will not boot.

know of any good disk utilities that will format drive D:\ (NTFS) and remove
the system files off of it completly? This problem is so frustrating.

You don't want to and you should never change the boot volume letter from
it's assigned installation letter, like Doum said earlier the registry is
full of entries that point to the drive letter onto which Windows was
installed, Windows must always retain its originally assigned drive
letter, the article mentioned earlier is only to be used to restore the
drive letter to its original assignment, in your case it *must* retain the
C: designation.

Before going in too deep you should first go in the BIOS and make sure
that the desired drive is set to be the first hard drive in the boot
order, when the computer boots it should boot to the drive where Windows
is installed. Save the BIOS changes and see if Windows will boot, that
may be all that is needed. If Windows doesn't boot return the boot order
to the second drive and post again.

John

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked
to, this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive
from one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I
actually tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a
bit easier to explain...

Windows Device Manager:

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr,
Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com.
E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this
problem.

Any suggestions would be great.

Doum wrote:


"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait

Doum wrote:


Andy <[email protected]> écrivait



I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John


I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[John John (MVP)]

Turn the second hard drive off and see if you can boot the computer.
You should be able to turn it off in the BIOS, if not just open the case
and pull the power connector to the drive. Does your computer have a
floppy drive?

John

No the Bios is set fine, that is the 1st thing that I checked, if I switch
it to the 2nd Drive windows will not boot.

know of any good disk utilities that will format drive D:\ (NTFS) and remove
the system files off of it completly? This problem is so frustrating.

You don't want to and you should never change the boot volume letter from
it's assigned installation letter, like Doum said earlier the registry is
full of entries that point to the drive letter onto which Windows was
installed, Windows must always retain its originally assigned drive
letter, the article mentioned earlier is only to be used to restore the
drive letter to its original assignment, in your case it *must* retain the
C: designation.

Before going in too deep you should first go in the BIOS and make sure
that the desired drive is set to be the first hard drive in the boot
order, when the computer boots it should boot to the drive where Windows
is installed. Save the BIOS changes and see if Windows will boot, that
may be all that is needed. If Windows doesn't boot return the boot order
to the second drive and post again.

John

Scott S wrote:

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked
to, this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive
from one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I
actually tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a
bit easier to explain...

Windows Device Manager:

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr,
Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com.
E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this
problem.

Any suggestions would be great.




Doum wrote:



"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait


Doum wrote:



Andy <[email protected]> écrivait




I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John


I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[Andy]

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked to,
this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive from
one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I actually
tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a bit easier to
explain...

Windows Device Manager:

Device Manager does not have the capability to show disk partitions.
Disk Management, on the other hand, does.

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr, Boot.ini,
and Ntdetect.com.

Your story is a little inconsistent. Your initial message said the
first disk contained three partitions: C containing Windows, plus two
other partitions, D and E, and the second disk had only one partition,
the system partition containing the boot files. Now you're saying the
system partition is D.

E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

The reason it's D:\Windows is because Windows is enumerating the other
disk first, the one containing the System partition. This means that
the BIOS is set to boot from that disk (the one containing the System
partition).

If you want the partition containing \Windows to be both the system
and boot partition, that partition must be active (look at Disk
Management to verify), and the BIOS must be set to boot from the disk
containing the \Windows partition. Also, the boot sector must contain
the proper boot code that will run ntldr, and boot.ini must correctly
reference the rdisk and partition containing \Windows.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this problem.

Any suggestions would be great.

"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait
Doum wrote:

Andy <[email protected]> écrivait


I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John


I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter "H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[Scott S]

Sorry Andy I should have been a little more elaborate, but I tried changing
drive letters from the registry, I switched drive letters to D:\ and the
system followed.

I'm back again guys, I came across the support article that you linked to,
this process would work if you wanted to change the system/boot drive from
one letter to another, I have done this before successfully. And I
actually
tried this on my current system, now maybe it will make this a bit easier
to
explain...

Windows Device Manager:

Device Manager does not have the capability to show disk partitions.
Disk Management, on the other hand, does.

C:\ (Boot Drive)
Contains C:\windows etc... also contains Ntldr, Boot.ini, and
Ntdetect.com,
D:\(System Drive)
Completely blank except for folder "System Volume info Ntldr,
Boot.ini,
and Ntdetect.com.

Your story is a little inconsistent. Your initial message said the
first disk contained three partitions: C containing Windows, plus two
other partitions, D and E, and the second disk had only one partition,
the system partition containing the boot files. Now you're saying the
system partition is D.

E:\(Just DATA MY DOCS ETC...
F:\(Music)

When I load up Recovery Council there is only one windows that I can log
into 1.) D:\WINDOWS (wierd right?) ok so I log into that cd C:windows,
fixmbr...overwrite the existing mbr?...yes.

The reason it's D:\Windows is because Windows is enumerating the other
disk first, the one containing the System partition. This means that
the BIOS is set to boot from that disk (the one containing the System
partition).

If you want the partition containing \Windows to be both the system
and boot partition, that partition must be active (look at Disk
Management to verify), and the BIOS must be set to boot from the disk
containing the \Windows partition. Also, the boot sector must contain
the proper boot code that will run ntldr, and boot.ini must correctly
reference the rdisk and partition containing \Windows.

Restart windows and still the same results as perviously... I am quite
experianced in IT and networking, and I have never came across this
problem.

Any suggestions would be great.

Doum wrote:

"John John (MVP)" <[email protected]> écrivait
Doum wrote:

Andy <[email protected]> écrivait


I have recently installed a clean copy of XP onto a machine with 2
hard drives, one is the C: drive with 2 other partitons D: & E:

The 2nd hard drive is completly blank and just formatted. The
problem is windows has installed on the C: Drive, but the 2nd hard
drive is listed as the system disk in the device manager and C: is
the boot drive.
when I boot with recovery coucel and try to fixmbr it states that
windows is installed on F:\windows (Which is the 2nd hard drive).

Any ideas on how to change the "system drive" to the C:\ (boot)
drive?

Run Disk Management, and set the C: drive active.
Copy boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com from the system partition to
C:\.
Reboot, go into BIOS setup and set (Hard Disk Boot Priority) the disk
drive containing partition C: as the boot drive.



I would reformat, there must be thousands of references to
"F:\Windows" in the OP's XP registry and changing them manually would
take days. It's a lot faster to reinstall everything from scratch.

There is *absolutely* no need to reformat! You can change the System
partition from one partition to another or from one disk to another
and the Boot Volume will retain its drive letter when Windows is
booted, that also applies if you make the Boot Volume the System
drive.
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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the boot volume.

*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.

Note On dynamic disks, this is known as the system volume.

John


I didn't want to tell my whole story, I thought it was irrelevant
but...

[snip...]

I installed WinME on the 4.3GB (C, XP Pro on the 20 GB (ATA66) (D.
After I finished the installations, I installed Ghost 2003 (in XP) and
cloned the XP drive on another 20 GB hard drive (UDMA5) plugged on the
PCI controller and removed that drive from the system.

Maybe 10 days later, the XP HD failed (on the ATA66). So I took the
cloned disk and put it back in the system on the ATA133 controller. It
was still the second hard drive that POST showed up.

When XP began to load it took an eternity and when it finally came up,
the drive had become H: (remained H:?), ATI MMC didn't work, AVG didn't
work, Ghost didn't work, etc. I went to the registry and found that all
the references to Windows were to "D:". I tried to change the letter
"H"
to "D" in Disk Management but Windows wouldn't let me change the system
drive letter.

That is a well known problem that could have easily been fixed by
reassigning the drive letter back to its original designation by editing
the Mount Manager database in the registry.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John