changing active partition before deleting old one

[redmike]

Hi,

In the process of migrating from W98 to W2k (laptop not powerful enough for XP).

Have moved or reinstalled all programs and am now ready (I think ) to delete and merge some partitions.

I have one drive partitioned as follows..all fat32

C active drive with W98 on it - (boot)
F W2K (boot)
D E H have data and programs

C is primary and the others are logical

Please tell me the steps (this is not my area of expertise) to make the F drive the primary (active) drive.

Not sure if or when I have to copy or move NTDETECT.COM , ntldr , boot.ini from C to F ??

I can use either disk mangager in W2k or Partition Magic - or maybe I should say that both programs are available rather than "I can use them".

I had a look at the drives in both programs but can't see how to make F the active drive.

Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks,

Michael

 

[wolluf]

Mike - I just posted in your other thread, but you've just answered some questions I asked there. Read that post, and come back if you need to. You will need to use Partition Magic to make F: a primary partition if you want to remove current primary partition (you can't make logical drive active). So steps:-

1. make F: primary partition.
2. make F: active partition
3. copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini to root of F:
4. run fixboot F: from recovery console (if that's how it appears in recovery conole).
5. reboot - should boot into 2k.

Notes abot 2k boot floppy and multiple entries in boot.ini still apply (in fact with number of partitions you have you might want to include up to partition 6).

 

[edfair]

Suspect that you will need to clean the logicals D: and E: and merge F: into that space as the new D:. Then take d: to a primary and merge the primaries.
Don't know what that will do to your boot. But with PM you can always do a boot manager to a single partition.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[redmike]

thanks Ed and Wolluf, I have put replies on my other post at

http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/67/lev3/70/pid/616/qid/625676

and suggest that we use just that one: or this one if you prefer

Edfair
"Suspect that you will need to clean the logicals D: and E: and merge F: into that space as the new D:. Then take d: to a primary and merge the primaries."

This looks like the direction that I'm going to have to go in ...

Mike