Changing Main Boot Drive
Jul 8, 2008
I have a hard drive that comes with my PC and that has a corrupted Windows, but the boot.ini still works fine. So I got a new hard drive and installed a new fresh copy of Windows XP on it. So now I want to format the old hard drive and use the new hard drive as the boot drive. However, if I removed the old hard drive, the new hard drive doesn't boot at all. I've tried using the FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, and BOOTCFG /REBUILD commands, but I think I did it wrong.
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Sep 24, 2007
WinXP Pro SP2..Multiple drives USB, SATA, EIDE..Had WinXP on C:. Drive started getting a little flaky, created an XP parallel install on newly formatted NTFS drive F: Dual boot works fine, can choose either install to boot, (of course the F: install is newer/cleaner/faster)C: continues to go south, taking the bootloader with it.Is there some way to make the drive F: installation bootable, so that I can jettison the wonky C: drive? It's not a question of BIOS boot order, or whatever, if I disable C: and set the F: disk as the boot device, I get an error message about inserting bootable media.I'm fooling around with Acronis Disk Director and OS selector, but that doesn't seem to get me completely there.
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Jun 24, 2006
I just upgraded to a 300GB hard drive from a 250, which I will use as a backup drive. However, when I set it up, the primary boot partition got set up as D:. I have 5 partitions on this drive. The others were also mislabeled, but I could change them with the Computer Management tool. There is no C drive on this system. I want to make what is now D become C.The original also had 5 partitions. All I wanted to do is duplicate the old drive to the new one. Somehow, the boot partition became D and I can't change it from within Windows. Is there a way to do that? I have created the UBD for Windows using Bart's PE, so I can boot the machine independently of using the hard drive. If I can use that, is there a tool there or a command line program I can use to change it?
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Jan 8, 2006
I recently purchased a new hard drive and used the software that came with it to set up the new drive as the boot drive and the old drive as the slave. However after installation, it still shows the old drive as the boot drive and the new drive as the slave.I have set the jumpers to "master" on the new drive and slave on the old drive. Is there any way to change this? I dont know what else to do siince the jumpers are set correctly. running winXP home with Dell Pentium 4.
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Dec 3, 2006
I was doing a new installation of XP home on a new hard drive, XP formatted the drive as F: and installed the boot sector there because a thumb drive was in the usb port (which it recognized as C:). I wasn't paying that close of attention and I didn't realize XP would see that thumb drive as C:. My question: is there any way to change the boot letter back to C: without reformatting the hard drive?
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Sep 5, 2009
I was running windows on an IDE hard drive and bought a new SATA and installed a fresh copy of windows on it, now having a dual boot with the old installation on the IDE. I've been running on the SATA drive for a few months now and I want to remove the IDE drive from my system but when I disconnect it and reboot I get a message that tells me NTLDR is missing so I am assuming that the boot record is on the IDE drive. How can I make the SATA drive my main boot drive?
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Oct 5, 2007
I just formatted my PC, I installed windows xp pro again but it installed everything on my small drive h: drive which only has 4gig on it, is there a way to change everything back to my c: that has 107gig on it? I installed a couple of programs and its already full.
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Aug 18, 2009
I am having an issue with changing the main drive letter on my mother's computer. I made a pretty amateur mistake when I was re-installing Windows XP for her and left my external hard drive connected from taking her files off of her old hard drive so the installing found "H:" being the most appropriate drive letter and now a few badly written programs she has tried to install automatically fail because they are set to look for drive "C:".I know my only option is to re-install yet again to get a fresh start, but I was hoping there was another possibility (albeit might be harder) to set the drive letter right. Typically I went to "manage" and "drives and storage" and attempted to change the letter, but Windows will not allow me to change the drive letter of the main volume. If anyone has any suggestion, please throw them out there-I may have made an newbie mistake, but I know my way around pretty well.
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Mar 16, 2007
I have a dual monitor setup on my PC. Today, when I boot it up, the main monitor displayed all theboot information and startup stuff, however, when the system SHOULD have gotten to the user login screen, the main montor came up with "no signal." The secondary monitor at this time will still show my mouse moving around on it, and I'm able to move the mouse over to the main monitor but I can't see anything.I've gone through a few basic manuevers to see what was wrong. I booted in safe mode and logged in to my mai account and attempted to change the other monitor to the main one; However, Safe Mode does not appear to supoort multi-monitor and I couldn't change this. After that, I attempted to VNC into my computer with the notebook I'm on now. When I came to the login dialogue box, the only account I could log into was the invisible "Administrator" account. My main account, as well as a temporary account I created for testing, both came up with an error "Cannot access due to user restrictions." My theory is that because all of the accounts which are actually visible on the login screen seem to not be working, the login is bugging and not outputting anything to my main monitor (since I have verified both monitors and connections to be working properly).
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Jul 19, 2009
My main HD is about to give up. It's making strange noises whenever I start up or have a file on that drive open.Could I buy a new HD and install it as a slave drive. Then clone my main drive to the slave drive and then get rid of the old main drive and put the clone in as my new main drive? Without a lot of f***ing about?The reason I ask about doing it this way is that I don't have a set of XP disks, I just have the recovery disk that came with computers 8-10 years ago. It's pre sp1 and I've used it three or four times already and I'm sure it will be more hassle than I need to re install from it.I'm running XP sp2. When I had this comp put together they had to do a raid controller, I don't really know what that is. Something to do with the fact that the main drive is IDE only and my current second drive is IDE or Sata but is in place as an IDE drive.
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Sep 17, 2006
I took out a driver from a computer and installed it as a slave on a new one and tried to copy everything on it but it won't let me access the one main user folder--its say I don't have access rights, but I am logged on as an Administrator. How do I change that?
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Feb 22, 2006
I changed my boot option using msconfig to safe mode. But I didn't realize I needed a local username/ password to login. So now I don't know a local username password and pressing F8 and specifying Normal mode still boots in safe mode.
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Jun 19, 2006
I have a friend who's motherboard was fried and he also had to change the power supply. He brought it to a computer shop and they diagnosed and told him to replace the two. He replaced it and now it will just boot pass the memory test and before the windows screen comes up saying windows xp loading, the blue screen of death comes up for 1 second and restarts, this process continues to occur. I heard you can try to run the repair but he also needs the cd key or install xp right over with the same key. Unfortunately I don't have the key. I heard you can run the recovery console and fix it but I'm not to sure exactly how to do that and wouldn't mind a little help with some step by step instructions. It has to do with the HAL.
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Jun 4, 2005
I reinstalled Windows XP and accidentally installed it on my D: drive. Now I want to change the system folders, prog files, etc and make the C: drive my default one. Is there any way to do this WITHOUT having to reinstall XP again?
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Jun 3, 2008
I created a new partition and installed Windows on it a while back, but when I booted up, it had the letter G and my other partition that I used to store music was drive C.I was going to change drive letters around so that my OS was on drive C, but I was wandering if this would mess up any applications I have on the system?
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Jan 30, 2005
i feel that this is probley simple... but I don't know how to do it. I've right clicked directly on the dvd-player to see if I could change it and nothing is there. My dad has a dvd-player F: and a cd-rom drive E:, His computer was formatted recently, but now the software for each of the drives are mixed up. Putting a dvd in drive F:, tells us that drive E: does not contain a disk.I would like to just change the drive letters back to how it wants to be set-up.
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Nov 22, 2006
i am dual booting xp mce and vista.. and im wondering if its possible to change the displayed names because xp shows up as "earlier windows version" or something like that and i'd rather it just say xp
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Jul 7, 2005
I recently attached a new dvd rom to my pc. After it was detached, the drive letters on my extra HDD's have changed around.Can anyone please explain to me how to change the drive letters back?
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Dec 30, 2007
I got a usb flash drive and plugged it in for the first time today. My computer automatically named it (F and (G - it had two partitions apparently. Anyway, I also have a Buffalo external hard drive that was always (F before. I figured my computer just assigned the usb flash drive (F and (G temporarily because the external hard drive wasn't turned on. So when I did plug it in, it was named (H. However, when I disconnected both drives, and re-plugged the external hd, it was still (H. Also, I noticed that all my folder settings in the external hd were reset.
I tried uninstalling the driver for the usb flash drive and the external hd remained (H.
Is there anyway to reverse this without reformatting or otherwise damaging my files inside the external hard drive
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Jan 31, 2007
So I just ran into a problem with my External Western Digital Hard Drive. Previously, my drive was mapped as the E Drive (I believe) and after taking it down and setting it up again (when i moved back to college), my external hard drive switched drive names on me. This really sucks, as my external drive stores all of my iTunes music and now when i run iTunes, it tries to find the music from the E Drive location and not the G Drive location. Is there an easy way I can change the letter drives so that I don't have to reimport all of my music?
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Jun 20, 2010
I wanted to install Windows XP on an old computer. Its CD drive was broken, so I installed XP from its hard drive instead. When everything was finished, I ended up with two drives, D and E. Unfortunately, I was tempted to change the letters (OCD, much?) to C and D, and did so (via regedit).Now, my computer won't boot up; the welcome screen shows up, but it freezes there.
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Nov 9, 2006
I have been using a Compaq Deskpro with Windows XP SP2. And then I sold that computer and bought a Compaq Evo. I then inserted the same harddrive but it is failing to boot. When I insert the installation disc it says "Press any key to boot from CD". Pressing keys does not activate anything and it stays on the same screen. I then created 6 set up disks and they all work perfectly loading drivers etc. The problem starts when I reach the stage where it says "insert Win XP SP2 installation disc and press any key when ready". Pressing the keyboard keys produces no response
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Mar 26, 2007
I am running XP Pro on a rebuilt Dell PIII. The original hard drive is 7G, so I added a 300G slave for storage. My plan now was to change the 300G drive to the Master drive. I reformatted, booted from my XP disc & installed the OS on the "new" 300G drive. Then I switched the jumper & cable so it was in the master position.and nothing.
It starts up, tells me to hit F2 for setup or F1 to continue. When I hit F1, it goes to a blank screen with flashing cursor, but no command line
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Dec 21, 2004
I'm having trouble when I enter my BIOS. It seems that once I enter, I can't move up or down or do anything at all. At first, I thought it migt be my keyboard, but I switched my keyboard with the keyboard from my other computer. It still had the same problem. I don't know why my BIOS won't let me do anything. Can anyone please help? I just want to change the boot sequence so I can wipe my drive
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Oct 8, 2008
I recently installed a new hard drive into a friends computer and installed XP Home.
I ran all the updates and service packs.
I left later that day and let him install all his applications.
I got a call tonight from him saying he really screwed up and doesn't know what to do.
I had to follow his thinking over the phone so I hope I get this all correct.
He had trouble loading the drivers for his HP printer. He would get an error saying that a C: empHP_WebRelease folder was missing. He did manage to figure out that for some reason when I installed XP it called the Boot drive "I" instead of "C"
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Sep 19, 2007
I have an old HD From a system that I got rid of. I want to put it into a friends system to see if I can retrieve the files off of it and put it onto my external HD. The hard drive was the boot disk and the computer I am installing it on has it's own boot disk. If I boot up with two boot disks will there be a problem? Is there anything I need to take into account before doing this? I am planning on installing the old HD onto an ATA cable that I unplugged from the DVD drive. The HD that is in this system is not on an ATA cable, I'm not sure what it is connected to, just a small plug with a blue cable going to the mother board.
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Feb 25, 2006
I have XP pro and have been trying to change the name of the name in Outlook Express from MAIN IDENTITY to Len and I have ended up with 2 names and Main ID and Len will not delete and if I ask it to start in Main ID I get this message, THE CURRENT IDENTITY COULD NOT BE CHANGED BECAUSE ONE OF THE APPLICATIONS WAS UNABLE TO SWITCH. CLOSE ANY DIALOGUE BOXES IN OTHER APPLICATIONS BEFORE TRYING AGAIN. I have nothing else open how to get back to main and get rid of Len.
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Feb 1, 2005
how do you change the name of the computer (not the user account names) the main one when you're installing windows
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Feb 8, 2006
When ever I am clicking on something the window that I want opens behind the main one. Lets say your in control panel, you click on add and remove or user accounts. It doesn't pop up in front of the control panel.I see it on the task bar and I just click it to make it display. What could the cause or settings for this?
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Jul 18, 2008
I have encountered rather a frustrating problem and am quite desperate for any help. Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to make sure to include all the relevant steps of how I reached the point I'm at now.Yesterday, running Windows XP Home Edition SP2, I tried out Google's new "Lively" program (3D interactive chat; mostly integrated into a web browser--Firefox in my case) for the first time. Later on in the day, just before bed, I decided I should defragment the C hard drive, as I had not done so in quite some time.I started the defragmenter while I was still tinkering with Lively, which was probably a bad choice, and perhaps very silly of me. A few moments after starting the defragmentation process, I clicked an option in Lively (to alter my avatar I think) and the system hung; both the mouse and keyboard no longer got any response from the computer.I waited for a little while, then I was able to move the mouse pointer again. I clicked in my browser window a couple of times to test responsiveness, but the system froze once more. After several minutes I gave up on waiting and went to bed, leaving the system to hopefully sort itself out.
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Oct 3, 2010
With the help of CNET my computer is back up and running, but I need more advice now. I formatted the hard drive to get rid of a trojan, and reinstalled stuff. Previously I had changed MY Documents from C Drive to D and made it the default, and I can't remember how I did it, I should have written it down!!
My netbook is a Wind, 120GB HD 1GBRam, intel processor, XP SP3
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