Exactly what happens when you try to boot? Several things could be going on here. The
back drive would need several things to boot properly.
Outline of you problem as I assume it to be? If I'm wrong, let me know. You started
with one hard drive installed with two partitions. Win98 is installed on the first
partition (C
, which is the active boot partition. XP is installed on the second
partition (D
. With this example, XP's setup program would place the initial boot
files on the active partition where Win98 is (C
. You then installed another hard
drive and did a backup of the XP partition to it. You then removed the first drive
and only have the second drive (with XP) installed, but it now boots as C:.
First problem would be that the backup partition Probably isn't labeled an active
(boot) partition. Second, it does not have the boot files. They are on the removed
drive's first partition. There are other factors as well. let me try to outline some
of the issues that would cause XP to get lost while booting...
1. As outlined above, the original drive would have all of the initial boot sectors
and files on it's active partition. When you remove that drive the PC simply doesn't
have any initial boot code to start the boot process. Maybe a "NO OS FOUND" type
error occurs?
2. Lets say you have the boot sector/init files/ active partition problem solved. On
the boot drive/partition, there is a file called boot.ini that contains all of the
paths to find each installed OS. This file will reference specific hardware drive and
partition info to locate the OS to be booted. Moving where the OS actually sits by
physically changing the drive/partition locations, will break the ability for the
boot files to actually find the OS files.
3. Let's say #1 and #2 above are resolved. The backup is from the original XP
installation partition (D: drive), which is not the same now. There are many settings
inside of the Windows registry that will look for the XP system folders to be in a
specific partition/location, in this example, probably in case D:\WINDOWS. But the
partition now boots as C:, so the XP install is technically in C:\WINDOWS. Windows
may start to load, but will quickly lose track of where all it's files are.
Note: Windows references drives and paths in different ways: As we know it... C:, D:,
E:, etc and also as hardware names... Here is an example of my boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/fastdetect
C:\="Previous Operating System on C:"
I have "fixed these paths before and got a system up and running with the OS, but
then you will have app issues. tracking down these issues sometimes become very
tedious.
Good luck!!
--
Randy Byrne
http://support.microsoft.com/support/mvp
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Do not email me, please use the newsgroup so that everyone benefits.
