Moving Installation Folder

[Rich]

Greetings,
After much sweat I finally got Win2000 Pro installed on my system. It
would only install as a clean install so I am dual booting with 98SE.
Since I installed from a copy of the CD on my "F" drive (Drive 1: C,F;
Drive 2 D; Drive 3 E), where I had the most space, I foolishly let the
OS install on "F". Now that I finally got it up & running, I want to
have the OS files on drive "C" so that I can continue to keep the OS on
a separate partition from data, apps, etc. Also, the multiple drive
lettering is needed because this is an older system with 3 drives
(10g,3g & 3G). "C" is the 10G & fastest & now I have the "winnt" folder
among various download files & misc trash on my "F" drive.
Is there any way that I can boot into 98SE, copy the "winnt" folder to
my "C" drive & edit whatever files need to be changed to have Win2000
boot properly? I don't care about installed programs as I have not
installed that much yet & can just re-install them. I just don't want to
go through the whole Win2000 re-install.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Greetings,
After much sweat I finally got Win2000 Pro installed on my system. It
would only install as a clean install so I am dual booting with 98SE.
Since I installed from a copy of the CD on my "F" drive (Drive 1: C,F;
Drive 2 D; Drive 3 E), where I had the most space, I foolishly let the
OS install on "F". Now that I finally got it up & running, I want to
have the OS files on drive "C" so that I can continue to keep the OS on
a separate partition from data, apps, etc. Also, the multiple drive
lettering is needed because this is an older system with 3 drives
(10g,3g & 3G). "C" is the 10G & fastest & now I have the "winnt" folder
among various download files & misc trash on my "F" drive.
Is there any way that I can boot into 98SE, copy the "winnt" folder to
my "C" drive & edit whatever files need to be changed to have Win2000
boot properly? I don't care about installed programs as I have not
installed that much yet & can just re-install them. I just don't want to
go through the whole Win2000 re-install.

Thanks,
Rich

Here are the short answers:
- It is possible to move your Win2000 to the first partition.
The process is not simple and there is a possibility that
it might fail altogether.
- You are stuck with the drive letter F:. It is not possible to
change it without affecting the stability of Windows.

 

[Rich]

Here are the short answers:
- It is possible to move your Win2000 to the first partition.
The process is not simple and there is a possibility that
it might fail altogether.
- You are stuck with the drive letter F:. It is not possible to
change it without affecting the stability of Windows.

Thanks for the response. I bit the bullet (as advised) & just
re-installed on C:\ where Windows 98SE lives. Windows 2000 would not
install from floppies(I forget the error message)& would not upgrade
Windows 98 (kept getting a Windows 98 crash). I was only attempting it
because the latest version of Quicken no longer runs on Windows 98.
Finally, I re-tried installing in Windows 98 with the dual-boot option,
changed the default directory from "F:\" to "C:\" & it worked (btw, it
had previously installed fine on "F" with dual-booting).It was not until
now that I browsed back through this newsgroup & found a thread stating
that this is not a good idea. I just assumed that Win2000 would ignore
the existing Windows 98 "C:\Windows" folder & create its own directory,
files, registry, etc. I keep applications on my "E" drive so any new
installations of existing programs under 2000 were put in a duplicate
folder on "E" with "Win2000" added to the name. So far things are
running well. The occasional blue screen & sudden lock-ups before blue
screen can form I attribute to the age of my system. It's a generic AMD
K6-III 450, Alladin mobo & 320mb of RAM. I had to swap my ISA
Soundblaster sound card with an old generic ESS card in an old parts
system because the crackling & popping would not stop. Other than that,
everything else was recognized & ran well. After a month or so, I'll
wipe Windows 98SE & run just Win 2000. Hopefully it will hold together
until then.
Thanks again.
Rich