fixing screwed up partition configuration without destroying XP

[Sergei Shelukhin]

Hi. I have an HP laptop that came with Vista and HP_RECOVERY partition
for built in system recovery (that doesn't work). I wiped Vista off it
but decided to keep recovery partition in case I need to recover
because of inadequate XP drivers, which can be the case with some
laptops; I broke the remaining HD space into 30 Gb for system + rest
for data and installed XP. In process, HP_RECOVERY was assigned a C:
drive letter, new system partition became D:, and data E:. The layout
is [ D: ][ E: ][C: ]

For some ungodly reason XP, while installing itself on D, actually
made C (HP_RECOVERY) boot partition and set it as active and primary,
which I didn't notice.
Recently I decided to get rid of HP_RECOVERY by merging it into E
(data), and noticed ntldr on C just as I was wiping it with Shift+del
to save Partition Magic the hassle of keeping the files 0_o Luckily I
was able to restore the files, and the laptop still boots from it;
however, I was wondering about what to do to get rid of HP_RECOVERY
without ruining the OS install now?

Would copying ntldr and stuff from root folder of C to D, and setting
D as active and primary while keeping the drive letter, suffice?

 

[John John (MVP)]

Just a note or correction on the terminology, you have the terms "Boot
Partition" and "System Partition" the wrong way 'round. I know it
sounds a bit "upside down" but on NT operating systems they are:

*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.

As for your question:

"Would copying ntldr and stuff from root folder of C to D, and setting
D as active and primary while keeping the drive letter, suffice?"

You will have to copy the files ntldr, NTDETECT.COM and boot.ini from
the C:\ root folder to the D:\ root folder and make the D: drive active.
The partition layout is being changed so you will probably have to
edit the ARC path in boot.ini file to reflect that.

Your boot.ini file will contain a line something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

The "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS" part is the ARC path,
notice that in this example it is set to boot the Windows installation
on partition (1). Your file may read differently and after you do
partition work or change the active partition the partition(#) may be
invalid. What you can do is add all purpose lines to the boot.ini file
then clean it up after you successfully boot the machine with the new
partition layout, the file could be like so:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="1 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="2 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="3 Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

John

Hi. I have an HP laptop that came with Vista and HP_RECOVERY partition
for built in system recovery (that doesn't work). I wiped Vista off it
but decided to keep recovery partition in case I need to recover
because of inadequate XP drivers, which can be the case with some
laptops; I broke the remaining HD space into 30 Gb for system + rest
for data and installed XP. In process, HP_RECOVERY was assigned a C:
drive letter, new system partition became D:, and data E:. The layout
is [ D: ][ E: ][C: ]

For some ungodly reason XP, while installing itself on D, actually
made C (HP_RECOVERY) boot partition and set it as active and primary,
which I didn't notice.
Recently I decided to get rid of HP_RECOVERY by merging it into E
(data), and noticed ntldr on C just as I was wiping it with Shift+del
to save Partition Magic the hassle of keeping the files 0_o Luckily I
was able to restore the files, and the laptop still boots from it;
however, I was wondering about what to do to get rid of HP_RECOVERY
without ruining the OS install now?

Would copying ntldr and stuff from root folder of C to D, and setting
D as active and primary while keeping the drive letter, suffice?