Install XP on D: (slave), then boot as C: (Master)??

[jsteph]

Hi,
I have a machine without a CD, but 2 harddrives. The new one, which is bigger, faster, etc, I want to be the C:\ drive (master). But since it's new, I had to install it as slave. I have the XP install setup on the origian hardrive. So I want to install xp on the new drive (curretnly the slave D, shut down, and then swap jumpers on the drives, and have the new drive be my boot and C: drive.

Now, I understand that if actual third party apps are installed they hardcode paths in registry entries as "C:\xxxx" or whatever. But I'm not installing any apps yet, and doesn't Windows use $bootdrive$ or whatever for it's registry entries? Is this the main issue that I'd be facing? Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks,
--Jim

 

[bcastner]

Connect the new drive, jumpered appropriately, as the Master drive on the first IDE channel.

Install XP.

Then add the second drive as a slave device on the first IDE channel, or as master on the secondary IDE channel.

 

[temporello]

I don't quite understand your problem.
You could install the new drive as master and then boot the machine from CD and install XP.

 

[jsteph]

bcastner,temporello,
This machine doesn't have a CD, I guess I could get one for less than the hassle this would be, but the problem is in a way academic, but practical as well--I'm wondering how 'hardcoded' is the drive letter to the actual intstallation of XP.

I've already set up XP on the new drive, as D:, and I have a boot option to boot either the old xp from the old drive, currently C:, or the new xp, from the new drive, currently D:.

So I want to avoid a reinstall (an hour roughly of dead time staring at a progress bar). And, for the sake of clarity, let's just say I'm tossing the old drive C: into the trash. Now I've got my new drive, formerly c:, but now the only drive on the system. It won't boot--somehow the mbr doesn't see it as a 'boot' drive, but does see xp installed on it (since the old drive's mbr noted that there was another installation somewhere--the new d: drive).

How do I get it to boot? I guess I need to do fdisk? Is fdisk even available for xp? I looked for 'boot floppys' for xp, and the closest I came was a download from MS that images 6 floppys--and once that's all loaded (I tried this), it notes that I don't have a CD and bails! Is there any such thing as a single-disk boot floppy for xp where I can run an fdisk-like utility? Thanks,
Jim

 

[bcastner]

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/Q223/1/88.ASP&NoWebContent=1

I give this a 40% chance of working however. When XP was installed, was the Recovery Console installed as well? (there would be a hidden/system folder cmdcons, and at boot there would have been an option to choose the Recovery Console).

If not, install the Recovery Console prior to the swap.

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...efault.aspx?scid=kb;en-gb;307654&ln=en-gb

Hopefully this can be done with the XP image on your current drive C, or through the floppy disk set discussed in the Microsoft article above.

Do the swap, use the floppies to access Recovery Console, and then enter the following commands:

fixmbr
bootcfg /Rebuild
fixboot c:

 

[jsteph]

bcastner,
Thanks, I'll try that this weekend and see what happens,
--Jim

 

[wolluf]

Have you considered just transferring the old installation to the new drive. The new drive manufacturer's site will probably have a utility to do just that (ie, exact copy, new drive should boot as old). One word of warning - if you do this (utility will run from a floppy - you do have a floppy drive?) - immediately the copy has finished, remove the old drive and boot from the new connected on its own. Do not boot with both drives in the machine - or you may still have a drive letter problem!

 

[bcastner]

wolluf,

An excellent alternative, sir.

 

[jsteph]

wolluf,
I will try that. It's a western digital, and the cd that came with the drive had several utilities like that.
--Jim

 

[bcastner]

For Western Digital drives, they have a slighly odd notion of jumper settings. It is important that the jumpers reflect whether it is a single drive, or Master in a multiple drive setting, or a slave in a Multiple drive setting,etc. The jumpers are not completely intuitive as to what setting your are now in (and, as you plan to remove a drive, what they should then be set for).

 

[MechMan]

I've done the procedure that Wolluf suggest many times. Works every time!!

 

[jsteph]

I can't do wolluf's suggestion--copy the original to the new hd--the original is win98. I had copied my xp cd to that drive over the network because I knew I couldn't do the install from the network. So what I did was ran the install from win98, and chose the new drive to partition as ntfs and install. That's all fine, but now the new drive won't boot as a single, master C: drive--it only boots when the old drive is c and that drive's mbr has the dual boot options showing that there is another os on another hd.

So I did bcastners suggestion of Recover console--now the problem there is that I see 2 listings, but it's something like:
C: Partition 1 2000000 bytes (or something) FAT32


-: Partition 1 120000000 bytes NTFS

So Recovery doesn't even see a "D:"--it just shows "-:', which is odd. The drive shows up fine in the bios and at boot, and of course it boots up to XP fine when it's a slave--and then I see the 2 gig win98 drive as C:, and the new one as D: from XP.

So now the problem is simply: How do I get recovery to even see it so I can do the fixmbr or fixboot command? It won't allow me to select that drive as "-", I can only select the C: drive.
--Jim

 

[bcastner]

jsteph,

Wow.

Could you provide some details as the the make, model of this computer? It would help too to know the original installed OS version.

Some HP and Compaq models reserve an odd fat12 partition to hold BIOS configuration utilities and Recovery tools. This poses a serious issue of what one should do in this instance. My personal solution in these cases is to set up the BIOS and then nuke the partition. (I also say out loud three times: I will never again buy a computer with a manufacturer boot partition)

I think the make/model details would help us all as to the best course of action at this point.

 

[jsteph]

The original C: drive--a 2 gig wd, does have an 8mb unallocated partition--I think it did come from an old compaq, but the rest of the system is home built--a Soyo mobo/intel 815 chipset, with a p3-800 cpu. I too despise that practice of putting drivers on a non-dos proprietary partition, because if you get a new harddrive, you're sol when you've got to set up all the low-level drivers, such as all that 'pci steering bridge' whatever stuff. Why not just put it on the hardrive and a cd like everyone else?

Anyway, I finally got the machine to boot with the new 120 gig as the Master, by copying the boot.ini from a known-good xp box. I made sure the multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0) was all zeros--pointing to the first partition on the first disk--the old win98 boot.ini pointed to xp on disk(1), which was correct when the win98 was master and the other was slave. Anyway, while it boots fine as the only disk on the system--it *still* sees it as drive D:. There is no C: drive on the system. So I may just call it OK and leave it like that, but I'd really like it to be C:. The registry is full of references to "D:\Windows\Systme32", and that registry entry for MountedDevices\DosDevices points of course to D:, so I'd have to do a massive search/replace to correct this, and I'm not sure it's worth it. So if I have any free time in which to take that risk, I may do it out of acacemic curiosity, but otherwise I'm set. Thanks for all your help,
--jim

 

[Nelviticus]

Is a copy of the XP CD still on your old drive? You could set the new one up as master and the old one as slave, boot from a Win98 startup floppy then just CD to the directory containing your installation files. If you run it from there you should get the option to do a fresh installation on your new drive which should default to C:.

Editing the registry is unlikely to work - I've tried it in a similar situation. You'll just never get them all.

If all of the above fail then temporarily borrow the CD-ROM from another machine and install it from there.

Nelviticus

 

[jsteph]

Nelv,
I had originally tried that, but the Win98 boot cd couldn't even see the drive that was to be the new 'master'. It said Invalid Drive specification when I tried both c: or d: with the newer drive as master, I even, for kicks, tried all letters, thinking it might have somehow put it at m: or z: for some odd reason. It was just a strange thing, and I had tried the 'alternate' jumper settings that WD suggests when problems like this arise, and still no luck.

What I ended up doing, since I was uncomfortable with D: as the Master, was that I just repartitioned and reformatted the new drive, and then it was all visible, then I dove into another machine and borrowed the cd, and installed XP from scratch and it's fine. I could have done that from the start, but it was one of those things where--for either academic reasons or just plain stubborness--I had to see if it could be done the other way.
--Jim

 

[bcastner]

Jim,
You made the right choice.