Hard Drive problem help.

[claymca]

I need serious help. I had a 60Gb HD Partitioned to 10gigs and 50gigs. The 10gigs (Disk C) was for XP pro. The other 50gig (Disk D) for my programs file and etc.... I had a 20GIG on the same PC for extra storage (Disk H). I formatted the 20Gig and used norton ghost to ghost C to H. Then I used Partition Magic to Format Disk C so I could merge C and D to one whole drive. I forgot to change the Drive letters. Now what I think is happening is when the PC boots I get a DOS prompt saying Invalid Boot.ini booting from C:\Windows, but C:\Windows is actually H:\Windows and it hangs at the login screen but witout the login.

What can I do to get it to boot or is there a way to change Drive letters?

 

[G0AOZ]

There are probably two ways of doing this. The easier way is maybe to recable/jumper your 20Gb drive as Master on the Primary IDE interface. The second option would be alter the BOOT.INI file, but you'd need access to the drive for this.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[claymca]

I already have the 20Gb drive as the master on the primary IDE interface. It shows up but it won't complete the boot.

 

[rvnguy]

claymca,

This is going to get sticky....Hope that you are familiar with and comfortable with the command prompt at this point. If not maybe you have a friend that is..do not attempt this unless you or a friend are.

first..remove the merged drive
In bios insure that the remaining drive is seen and set to be the boot drive.
Try to boot..if you get a good boot into XP then you have a working Ghost image. If not you will probably have to excecute some type of re-install 1. A repair install...failing that 2. a clean install to the 20gig drive

You got a good boot into XP great..now what?
Well XP has a quirk on drive letter assignments(unlike win9X flavors) and does not necessarily pay attention to cableing or jumpering. You really or XP really tried to boot from the merged drive ignoring what you had done to set the 20gig drive to be the boot drive.

So re-install the merged drive. Now you most probably cannot get a clean boot for the above reasons. Get out your XP CD and boot from it and select the repair console option.

Comand prompt>
you will now need to check which drives(by size) are assigned what device letter. (You have two XP installs and need to know which you are changing and which to address at the cmd prompt)

Check the 'bootcgf'on the 20gig drive bootcfg /list

you will then bootcfg /redirect useBiosSettings

this should allow an overide to bios settings

exit and see if it works..if a success then

you can back it all up and do the following to set the drive assignments as you want:

This is from somewhere on the MS site
Change the System/Boot Drive Letter
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
1. Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
2. Log on as an Administrator.
3. Start Regedt32.exe.
4. Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
5. Click MountedDevices.
6. On the Security menu, click Permissions.
7. Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
8. Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
9. Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
10. Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
11. Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
12. Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".

This frees up drive letter C.
13. Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
14. Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
15. Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
16. Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
17. Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
18. Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
19. Restart the computer.


rvnguy


"I know everything..I just can't remember it all