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General discussion

Windows drive letters wrong; cannot boot

Feb 26, 2004 6:15AM PST

I have had a number of HD problems, stemming from a HD crash. I formatted my new drive and installed Windows XP Home; later, I updated online to SP1. Somehow, this crashed. When faced with losing all of my data, I installed Windows on to a backup internal drive to recover data. I then went back, formatted my HD and reinstalled Windows to C; it had been on D.

Everything was going fine, I spent hours reinstalling programs, rebooting, and everything was perfect. Eventually, I deleted the Windows on D, as I was working on C and D was just a data backup drive.

At one point, I rebooted and had operating system errors. I booted up from my Windows XP disk and it keeps wanting to recover Windows on what it calls "C" but is in fact D. I cannot get my drives changed and am stuck.

Help?

Discussion is locked

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Update
Feb 26, 2004 6:35AM PST

After trying several boot disks and recovery methods, I am now in the process of reinstalling Windows on the D drive again. I am hoping that given access to Windows again and both C & D drives, I can reset to recover my existing Windows (with all of it's patches, upgrades, and applications).

What should I do when I get back to Windows and can access both drives? Is there a management tool I can use to specify my desired Windows drive?

I REALLY need some advice on this.

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Update II
Feb 26, 2004 6:57AM PST

It keeps getting stranger! When the new Windows installed finished (supposedly on my data drive D), I was welcomed with my login and password and all applications in place.

I am not sure what to do to keep this configuration. I sense that if I delete (again) the windows installation on my D drive, I will be back here again.

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Re:Update II
Feb 26, 2004 4:29PM PST

Instead of deleting why not just pull the power connector to the D drive and see what the effect would be.

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Re:Re:Update II
Feb 27, 2004 2:46PM PST

I have had this problem, running xp home with 2 hdd and 6 partitions. Thought I could just install xp to another hdd/partition and delete what was c:.
XP writes boot informtion to your c drive, and when it cannot find it, it crashes.

Your solution: get the boot.ini file off of the c drive next time, and edit it so it looks for the operationg system in the correct partition.

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When you have both of them installed do you get the option
Feb 29, 2004 7:34AM PST

of which one to boot to at start up? Your computer should look for boot up files on the master hdd of the primary ide connecter(where the hdd hooks into your motherboard). Did you swap the cables around to install the other one on the d: drive? Here is an experiment to see which XP instillation you are booted to. Go to my documents and make a .txt file and name it a weird name so you'll recognize it. Then go to C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Documents and see if its in there. If not go to D:\Documents and Settings\User name\My Documents and see if its in there. Where ever it is in c or d, that's which drive your booted to and this will make it easier to fix if you know.