Disk management and the bootable drive

Here is my issue:

One drive, two partitions, one has a fresh copy of XP, the other a restored copy.

I want to boot from the restored partition.

Partition Magic and Gparted both show the restored partition as the bootable actove partition, however disk management still shows the partition with the fresh copy as bootable. It boots from the fresh copy without offering me an option.

Any way to fix this?

 

before getting fancy, mind posting a copy of your boot.ini file?

 

Ok. I got the boot.ini changed so that it boots to the correct partition. Now my issue is drive lettering. The partition I am booting to is the 2nd partition on the drive (2). It always boots it as Drive E and the 1st partition as C. I think in the Recovery Console it was C. So I think this is the cause of some of my programs being screwed up. I want this partition to be lettered C.

Maybe this is getting fancy but maybe now that I have the drive bootable, I will just copy the folders from partition 1 that I want to save to a folder on partition 2 and then delete partition 1. Then I will only have 1 partition so hopefully it will become C. I know after I may have to fix my boot.ini file again.

 

can any of you help me. i have the acer aspire 5920 drive c and d

deleted drive d not knowing there were hidden files (recovery)

tried to run e-recovery but it is now STUCK on there saying it can not find a certain file obviously the one i deleted... windows will not start up i did not do recovery discs, this is my sons laptop whi is terminall ill. and i desperate to get back on warcraft. i feel really helpless as i deleted what he needed for recovery !!!! is there any other way of getting windows back on.

 

not sure I understand what you are saying here....

Since you have your desired result of booting to the proper OS, does it matter what drive letter?

Let me tell you what I think is going on.

Windows XP can boot to any drive, unlike its predecessors, but even if you are booting to a different partition, several system drive files are reqired to be on the first drive of the primary partition.

While you can change the drive letters all you want, you cannot change the system drive letter. In this case, the fresh copy is on the first partition and it holds those critical system files for both the fresh and the restored OS.

 

altrace, start your own thread

 

But since my 2nd partition is a restore of an old drive shouldn't it have the original critical system files?

A lot of stuff isn't working. I suspect related to invalid paths because the restored partition is no longer C. For example, desktop icons are blank, wireless card is not working...etc.

 

Have you installed a boot manager?

 

After messing with the partitions using partition magic my computer would not boot at all. It would hang on the small windows logo right before the welcome screen. I tried recovery console, fixmbr, fixboot, bootcfg, etc. Did not help. Also tried Gparted ang got errors with any partition operation I tried. I was ready to give up and go with a fresh copy of windows but I figured I would give one last try to Acronis Disk Director from boot cd. I used it to move the partition I wanted to boot from to the left. After that my pc booted, the partition I wanted was C, all icons back, wireless working, so far, so good.

Bottom line - Both Partition Magic and Gparted - gave me nothing but errors and headaches. Acronis Disk Director worked smooth, no errors. It even let me browse my drive outside of windows using the boot cd. Unfortunately it only lets you edit files smaller than 64kb.

I believe the Disk Director Suite comes with a boot manager (OS Selector). I never though of using one. Right now, I am back to one OS but do you suggest it?

 

Don't think a boot select or is going to change your situation

Does it list the drive you have the current preferred XP on as a system drive?

 

I don't know how far you have got with the boot process, but if you managed to boot into the second O/S then you might get the message "Missing operating system". This might shed some light:
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=contrib:ntfsreloc

From what I have read some years back, WinXP almost demands to be on the first partition. I do not know if it has changed. One solution might be to install virtualbox from virtualbox.org and run a VM. Perhaps, you can copy the second installation into the first partition, & only partition, on the VM disc, and then run a FIXMBR to correct the master boot record. After this, you might then use the ideas from ntfsreloc to resurrect this disc if this is required.

Of course, this sounds complicated and I hope that there is an easier way to mend this problem.

More info from clonezilla.org here: http://drbl.sourceforge.net/faq/fine-print.php?path=./2_System/23_Missing_OS.faq#23_Missing_OS.faq

 

I thought everything was working but then all of a sudden it would not boot again - but this time I got the dreaded blue screen. I tried the recovery console first and then ended up doing a windows repair install.... Of course now I will probably have to do some program reinstalls.

Looking back, I should have just done a clean reinstall of windows, just migrated my data. I just didnt want to be bothered with reinstalling, redownloading, retweaking everything. I ended up being a lot more bothered however had I just done the clean install.

By the way I know from the Recovery Console (which I just installed so I do not have to load it every time from the CD), I know about fixmbr, fixboot, bootcfg, chkdsk, diskpart etc... What does "sys c:" do? Does that help in XP or was that only for Win98? Googling gave me mixed results.