Did insane thing- now comp. trying to boot D: which has no OS

[Lyn]

Hi;
I did an insane thing, and only a Pro will be able to help me out with this
doozey!
Here are my details.
I have 3 P4 networked computers, all running WinXP.
On one, I put a dual boot with WinXP Pro & Home.
Home was on C: drive and Pro was on D: drive.
I got rid of Home, and in the boot.ini I deleted the reference to booting to
C: Home, so that Pro would just quickly boot up D: Pro.
Fine & Dandy.
But then, I decided I wanted Pro to have the C: drive letter. So I went into
regedit and set the permissions and changed the drive Letter to C:
However! I forgot to change the boot.ini back to C:
Now I cannot access Pro, because the comp. is trying to boot to D: which has
no OS -but WinXP will not reinstall on it either.
Any suggestions would be welcome for sure, as you can well imagine.
Lyn
(e-mail address removed)
Remove lyn

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi;
I did an insane thing, and only a Pro will be able to help me out
with this doozey!
Here are my details.
I have 3 P4 networked computers, all running WinXP.
On one, I put a dual boot with WinXP Pro & Home.
Home was on C: drive and Pro was on D: drive.
I got rid of Home, and in the boot.ini I deleted the reference to
booting to C: Home, so that Pro would just quickly boot up D: Pro.
Fine & Dandy.
But then, I decided I wanted Pro to have the C: drive letter. So I
went into regedit and set the permissions and changed the drive
Letter to C: However! I forgot to change the boot.ini back to C:
Now I cannot access Pro, because the comp. is trying to boot to D:
which has no OS -but WinXP will not reinstall on it either.
Any suggestions would be welcome for sure, as you can well imagine.

There is no easy way to change the drive letter of the system volume. You
may not be able to get your system back to a workable state. You need to
back up any important data now. You can use a Linux CD or BartPe to boot
from a CD and copy your important data to CD or DVD. Once you have a backup
you can use BartPe to try and edit the registry back to where you started.
Alternatively you could format and reinstall XP.

http://www.knoppix.org/

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

You can use the recovery console to fix the boot.ini

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

 

[Lyn]

Hi;

There is no easy way to change the drive letter of the system volume. You
may not be able to get your system back to a workable state. You need to
back up any important data now. You can use a Linux CD or BartPe to boot
from a CD and copy your important data to CD or DVD. Once you have a
backup you can use BartPe to try and edit the registry back to where you
started. Alternatively you could format and reinstall XP.

http://www.knoppix.org/

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

You can use the recovery console to fix the boot.ini

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

Thanks a mill. Kerry
I could only figure out one solution, which I went ahead and did.
I reformatted and reinstalled. Serves me right I guess.
But I will look into your links for future reference....not that I would
ever do that doozey again. Ha ;-)
Lyn

 

[Kerry Brown]

Thanks a mill. Kerry
I could only figure out one solution, which I went ahead and did.
I reformatted and reinstalled. Serves me right I guess.
But I will look into your links for future reference....not that I
would ever do that doozey again. Ha ;-)
Lyn

Your welcome. A reformat is often the result when you try to change the
drive letter of the system volume.