Migrating to a new HD and changing boot partitions

[kabluton]

I have my PC set up for multiboot (Windows ME on volume C and Windows
XP Pro on E) it is a single physical drive that I have outgrown. I am
going to use Powerquest to copy the entire partition that XP is
located on to a larger HD and I am doing away with the ME partition.
My problem is that the C (WinME) partition FAT32 and is the active
partitionand contains the XP boot files but not the actual XP OS.

Can I copy the XP OS partition to a single active partion, then copy
the bootfiles, edit the boot.ini to reflect the change and expect that
it will work?

If so, how many and what are the names of the bootfiles I will need? I
know NTDETECT, boot.ini, off the top of my head. What are the others?

Thanks.

 

[Ron Sommer]

You can change drives, but not the way that you want.
Once you install XP to a partition besides C:, the Registry has references
to XP being on a another partition.
The only way to move XP to C: is to reinstall.
No third party software will move XP to C:. :-(
You will have to keep XP on E:.
Alter the boot.ini file to remove the ME reference.
You can put the boot files on E:, alter the boot.ini file, and make E: the
active partition.
--
Ron Sommer
Here is the reply to another post:
----------
The important points here are:

The initial boot of the XP will be into the partition with the ME in it
(presuming you installed the XP from the ME and setup a dual boot).. So
you will need to copy the hidden files
ntldr
boot,ini
ntdetect.com
from the root of the ME drive to the root of the XP one before you
start.

The XP, both in that boot.ini and in its own registry has references to
the explicit location of the physical drive (OK once you have moved the
partition back, but if you want to use the second for an emergency boot
you will have to plug it into the prime location), and also for the
partition number the XP is in (If you get that wrong you will get a
'missing hall.dll' at boot). So after copying back you need to be sure
you put the partition in the same place in the partition table that it
has at present. Which can be done by putting a 'micro partition' of say
8MB onto the drive first - ie in the position where the ME now is.
Safest would be not to delete and remake partitions at all, but use
Partition Magic to format them and then adjust sizes without juggling
the order. Then use it to make the XP one the active one.


Note that the XP will retain the drive letter it currently has - it will
not become C and there is nothing in practice to be done about that
short of a complete reinstall clean

 

[kabluton]

Here is what I did and it seems to have worked. I used Powerquest
DriveImage to copy ONLY the partition that had XP on it to the new
drive (drive to drive copy). Additionally, I copied NTDETECT, NTLDR,
and BOOT.INI to the new drive (I had to edit the boot.ini to reflect
that it was booting to partition 1 instead of 2 now) from the C
partition of the old drive. Then I used Partition Magic to make it the
Active Partion and also expand it to use the whole drive as a single
partition.

I unplugged the old drive, changed the jumpers on the new drive to
make it the master, crossed my fingers, and it booted up just fine. I
haven't had a lot of time to play with it but everything seems to be
working, no error messages. I even downloaded my email from the
Internet. At this point I believe everything went smoothly and the
transfer was a success.

I got some good tips from this site.

http://michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html