Need to scrub C: drive while keeping system files

[Guest]

Following recovery from a major crash which resulted in a corrupted OS on the
C: drive, I did a fresh installation of WinXP on my D: drive. I edited
boot.ini to make the D: drive my only boot drive. I reinstalled all my
programs on the D: drive and moved all my data files from the C: drive to the
D: drive. The C: drive now contains only the corrupted WinXP files plus other
stuff I no longer need. I would like to completely scrub the C: drive but
leave (or reinstall) the system files that are required in the bootup
sequence. Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Your last sentence is one reason I want to do what I described, although the
C: drive is 40GB and the D: drive is 300GB. As for the boot process, the
"computer" boots according to the contents of the boot.ini file. Before I
edited the boot.ini file to eliminate reference to the C: drive (because the
OS on it was corrupted), the boot process would stop and give me a choice of
whether to boot from the C: or the D: drive. Now it goes straight to the D:
drive to boot from. But the system files required for the boot are still
contained on the C: drive

 

[Guest]

I made a slight error. Your BIOS boots in alphabetical sequence not your OS.
You've also got a lot of wasted space using your C drive.

 

[Guest]

You have created yourself a Monster! When an OS boots it follows an
alphabetical sequence. "C" comes before "D". You should have made a
clean install, including formatting the C drive and reinstall everything on
your C drive. Your situation will create many problems in the future of
installing and/or uninstalling apps.

 

[Enkidu]

Your last sentence is one reason I want to do what I
described, although the C: drive is 40GB and the D:
drive is 300GB. As for the boot process, the "computer"
boots according to the contents of the boot.ini file.
Before I edited the boot.ini file to eliminate reference
to the C: drive (because the OS on it was corrupted),
the boot process would stop and give me a choice of
whether to boot from the C: or the D: drive. Now it
goes straight to the D: drive to boot from. But the
system files required for the boot are still
contained on the C: drive

As you are aware, "Byte" is not correct. I myself have a
functioning XP system on the D: drive, as you do. As to what
you can delete, the answer is, almost all of it.

The boot process uses the MBR which isn't in the file system
and so cannot *normally* be deleted. You don't want to do
that anyway. On the filesystem I believe that the only files
that are needed are ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini.

There is a way you can safely test this. If you boot off a
CD, such as Bart's PE CD (which boots a limited Windows),
you can safely move all the existing files, except those,
off the disk (onto the new one, which I suspect has space?
<grin>) Then you can boot and see what happens.

Bart's PE CD is always good to have around anyway!

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Guest]

Everything I've read confirms your belief that the three files you name are
indeed the files that are required in the boot sequence. But here's the thing
I've found confusing and that I haven't found a good answer to: If I do a
search (including for hidden files) for "boot.ini", nothing comes up,
although I know that it is on the C: drive (but not on the D: drive).
Presumably that is because it is in a special system partition that is not
searched. But if I search on the other two, I find them on both the C: and D:
drives within the Windows folder. Are there copies of them within the same
partition that contains the boot.ini file? If I knew this to be the case, I
wouldn't worry about deleting the entire Windows folder on the C: drive.