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  • Thread starter Thread starter Stavi
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Stavi

I recently decided to change a hard drive on one of my xp machines

I bought a new sata hard drive, plugged it in and turned my machine
on. Windows quickly installed drivers for it. I then turned off the
machine and removed both hard drives.

Using a seperate pc and partition magic I copied my system partition
from my old ide hard drive to the new sata one.

I then plugged in the sata hard drive to my original machine and
changed it's bios to point to sata first.

The PC now boots fine but when I try to log in it logs straight out
again

I have used remote regedit to check winlogin reg entries and it looks
ok

Most forums I read say it is malware or spyware, but the original hard
drive still logs on oks and apart from the few minutes when i
activated windows using the internet this PC does not go online.

My only idea is that I have some how broken activation - I have heard
of activation causing loops before but dont know what to do about it

My XP is legit, I bought it and installed it myself and have the
sticker to prove it
 
Hi Atavi,

Have you try-ed booting up in safe mode. Maybe you could isolate the cause
of the problem in safe mode.

Geets,

Argentum
 
Stavi said:
I recently decided to change a hard drive on one of my xp machines

I bought a new sata hard drive, plugged it in and turned my machine
on. Windows quickly installed drivers for it. I then turned off the
machine and removed both hard drives.

Using a seperate pc and partition magic I copied my system partition
from my old ide hard drive to the new sata one.

I then plugged in the sata hard drive to my original machine and
changed it's bios to point to sata first.

The PC now boots fine but when I try to log in it logs straight out
again

I have used remote regedit to check winlogin reg entries and it looks
ok

Most forums I read say it is malware or spyware, but the original hard
drive still logs on oks and apart from the few minutes when i
activated windows using the internet this PC does not go online.

My only idea is that I have some how broken activation - I have heard
of activation causing loops before but dont know what to do about it

My XP is legit, I bought it and installed it myself and have the
sticker to prove it
Click to expand...

This is a well-known problem. It is caused by an unintended
change of drive letter: Your system drive is no longer C: but
perhaps D: or E:.

The cure is simple if the machine is networked, less simple
if you have another PC to which you could connect the new
SATA disk, and rather involved if none of the above apply.
What is your situation?
 
Hi Atavi,

Have you try-ed booting up in safe mode. Maybe you could isolate the cause
of the problem in safe mode.

Geets,

Argentum
Click to expand...

Thanks for quick reply

That was my first reaction, I tried normal login and administrator
login, both in safe mode and normal mode, both log off straight away :(
 
This is a well-known problem. It is caused by an unintended
change of drive letter: Your system drive is no longer C: but
perhaps D: or E:.

The cure is simple if the machine is networked, less simple
if you have another PC to which you could connect the new
SATA disk, and rather involved if none of the above apply.
What is your situation?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -
Click to expand...

I have network and spare pc available

I fail to see why drive letters will change, after copying the
partition and removing the ide drive, the new sata drive is the first
drive to be detected and called C: (the bios confirms this)

I will try removing the cd-rom then sata drive will be only drive in
the system (apart from A:)
 
I have tried booting without cd-rom drive. I have played with bios
settings changing the order of ide-sata controllers, replaced primary
ide with sata and I still get the same problem

What was your method of dealing with wrong drive letter?
 
Stavi said:
I have network and spare pc available

I fail to see why drive letters will change, after copying the
partition and removing the ide drive, the new sata drive is the first
drive to be detected and called C: (the bios confirms this)

I will try removing the cd-rom then sata drive will be only drive in
the system (apart from A:)
Click to expand...

There is a simple reason why the drive letter changes: The
Windows registry already contains an entry for drive letter
C:. This entry is tied to the signature of your previous system
partition. Since drive letter C: is taken, Windows will assign
a different drive letter. Hence your problem!

Removing the CD drive is unlikely to help you, because it
will not free up the reserved drive letter C:. You must
remove it manually. Here is how you can do it:
1. Start the problem machine with the new SATA disk.
Do not log on.
2. Start a Command Prompt on a networked machine.
3. Run this command on the networked machine:
psexec \\BadPC cmd{Enter}
Make a note of the drive letter you see. You can get
psexec.exe from www.sysinternals.com.
4. Run regedit.exe on the networked machine.
5. From within regedit, open the registry on \\BadPC.
6. Navigate here in the registry of \\BadPC:
HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
7. Delete \DosDevices\C:
8. Rename \DosDevices\X: to \DosDevices\C:
where X: is the drive letter you memorised in Step 3.
9. Use shutdown.exe on the networked machine to
reboot the problem PC.

You should now be able to log on normally.
 
ok, I believe you now

I have just used the admin tool Computer Management, connected it to
the problem PC and had a look. I found a reference to E:\Windows under
Shared Folders :(

I couldnt access disk management though due to windows firewall
settings

I believe I can disable the firewall using group policy, if i do this
can i change the drive letter using disk management?
 
ok, I believe you now

I have just used the admin tool Computer Management, connected it to
the problem PC and had a look. I found a reference to E:\Windows under
Shared Folders :(

I couldnt access disk management though due to windows firewall
settings

I believe I can disable the firewall using group policy, if i do this
can i change the drive letter using disk management?
 
ok, I believe you now

I have just used the admin tool Computer Management, connected it to
the problem PC and had a look. I found a reference to E:\Windows under
Shared Folders :(

I couldnt access disk management though due to windows firewall
settings

I believe I can disable the firewall using group policy, if i do this
can i change the drive letter using disk management?
 
ok, I believe you now

I have just used the admin tool Computer Management, connected it to
the problem PC and had a look. I found a reference to E:\Windows under
Shared Folders :(

I couldnt access disk management though due to windows firewall
settings

I believe I can disable the firewall using group policy, if i do this
can i change the drive letter using disk management?
 
Great!

I used Computer Management to veify your claim which also gave me the
wrong drive letter

I changed the reg entry as you said and now the problem pc logs in
fine :)

The sysinternals you pointed me at looks good even though I didnt use

So thanks for fixing my PC and thanks for showing me a new resource
(new to me)
 
Stavi said:
Great!

I used Computer Management to veify your claim which also gave me the
wrong drive letter

I changed the reg entry as you said and now the problem pc logs in
fine :)

The sysinternals you pointed me at looks good even though I didnt use

So thanks for fixing my PC and thanks for showing me a new resource
(new to me)
Click to expand...

Congratulations, and thanks for the feedback.
 
Nice... :|

Now try to tell to a simple user to do that...
Click to expand...

Simple users ask experts to swap disks around. The OP
was close to being an expert before, and is one now.
 
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