Install of 2003 Server, need BOOT and SYSTEM partition to be thesame

[Brian Parker]

Prelude: I don't see a 2003 Server NG so posted in these 2.

I have a Server 2003 machine with 1 hard drive that has 4 partitions that used to be:

C:
D:
M:
W:

with C: being the BOOT and SYSTEM partitions and the rest being data. We decided to do a new
install of 2003 Server on C:.

I booted the 2003 Server cd, deleted the partition that previously held the BOOT/SYSTEM C: partition
then recreated the partition and formatted it. Then, I installed 2003 Server back on the new
partition I just recreated.

Everything looked good until I went under Disk Management to set my drive letters back where I
wanted them and I saw that the new C: was marked as the BOOT partition, but it made D: ( which was
really my old M: ) partition the SYSTEM partition. Not good.

C: has the WINDOWS, DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS, PROGRAM FILES, etc directories and the pagefile, and the
D: partition only has the required boot files ( boot.ini, ntloader, etc. ) along with the data I
had there originally.

If I was dealing with multiple drives, I would just remove the other drives and install again so it
couldn't use the wrong partition for the SYSTEM partition. This is the usual procedure for me when
installing the OS on a machine that has multiple drives. I don't have that option now because it's
only 1 drive and four partitions.

1) Is there a way to convince the MBR that the first partition should be both my BOOT and SYSTEM
partition? Possibly from the recovery console?

2) If not, without moving the data off of my other 3 partitions and deleting them, how can I install
2003 Server on this hard drive, in the first partition, and have that partition be my BOOT and SYSTEM?

If I have to move the data off of the other partitions and delete them, I'll do it, but I'd prefer a
solution that doesn't require this.

Thanks,
-BEP

 

[Brian Parker]

2) If not, without moving the data off of my other 3 partitions and
deleting them, how can I install 2003 Server on this hard drive, in the
first partition, and have that partition be my BOOT and SYSTEM?

If I have to move the data off of the other partitions and delete them,
I'll do it, but I'd prefer a solution that doesn't require this.

I decided to go with this approach:

I know that the last 2 partitions on the drive aren't marked active.
I'm backing up everything on the partition ( D: ) that is currently set as the SYSTEM partition.
Then I'm going to boot from the 2003 Server CD and delete the first 2 partitions ( C: and D: ) and
recreate the C: and install on there. Hopefully it will make it both the BOOT and SYSTEM since the
other 2 partitions aren't marked active. When I get booted to 2003 Server, I'll recreate the D: and
copy the data back.

Luck to me...
-BEP

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

There are no Server 2003 newsgroups, but there are several server
newsgroups:
http://aumha.org/nntp.htm

 

[Dave Patrick]

You shouldn't have deleted the active partition. When you did so the next
primary partition was automatically marked as active. You can format or
delete/ recreate the partition again during windows setup then abort the
install, then boot a win98 startup disk and mark the correct partition as
active then boot the server install CD-Rom and continue the installation.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Brian Parker]

You shouldn't have deleted the active partition. When you did so the
next primary partition was automatically marked as active. You can
format or delete/ recreate the partition again during windows setup then
abort the install, then boot a win98 startup disk and mark the correct
partition as active then boot the server install CD-Rom and continue the
installation.

Ah, got ya. I saw this happen when I backed up the second partition and deleted both #1 and #2 - it
marked #3 as Active and the next install ended up with the same problem as before.

In the end, I just copied all the data off and deleted all the partitions and created just the one I
needed for BOOT / SYSTEM and went from there. I'm happier this way because I ended up with better
partition sizes, etc. than before.

Thanks for the info.
-BEP

 

[Dave Patrick]

You're welcome.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect