Moving the system partition

[Drizzt]

Ok, I've managed to reassembly my poor PC and installed the new disk.

I've partitioned and copied over it the partitions from my old HD, but now I've got a problem.
Since the drive is faster than the older, I'd like to move the system partition too.

I've copied it with Ghost, so no problem on this. But:
1) I can't assign letter C to the partition 'cause is already used.
2) I can't remove letter C from old system partition, because is system partition
3) If I boot from the new disk, it boot normally. But after login it start executing cryptoapi.dll and saving settings for a long time.

?_?

[DirtFarmer]

I feel your pain Drizzzt, just finished migrating 7 partitions to a new hard drive with dual/boot win98 and xppro (using Driveimage instead of Ghost) . Had a fight cause it screwed all my drive lettering up and wouldn't let me change the drive letter of the xp system partition. This page helped me to fix the drive letter issues:

http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=108

Used the fixboot command and some editting of the boot.ini to get everything humming... but I do remember it being not to much fun.

[Paddy]

Is there something already on your new c: drive?
Cant you just boot gohst from a flopy/CD and copy the image that way?

[Gurm]

Even with the correct procedures (that is a pretty good guide) this is NOT a good idea. Windows will just make your life a living hell over this.

- Gurm

[Technoid]

yeah, Win2k and XP marks the hdd's with it's preferred drive letter
Have had my run ins with that Great feature

[Wombat]

Okay, I'm hitting the exact same problem.

How do I get this to work?

I've tried running
FIXMBR
FIXBOOT
BOOTCFG /REBUILD

but the computer still hangs unless the old system drive is in the machine.

[Fred H]

I have had a problem with my 60 gigs IBM, system HD, partitioned in 2 logical units.
After an unlucky power blackout the HD crashed, loosing the partition. Strange.
Anyway I tried to repartition it in 2x50% units as before. FDISK didn't work.
I tried the FDISK /MBR trick without luck.
Tried the IBM HD Fitness to remove the MBR. It didn't recognize the HD as IBM made. Strange.
After a half a day I found a new IBM HD Fitness which could remove the MBR (it writes zeros on it)
Now everything went ok.
Maybe my story helps in some way.
I did learn that not all FixMBRs work. The Boot sector must be zeroed out.
Edited:
Oh, yes, I ghosted back the system without problem.
I ghosted the same system to a smaller HD too, but I run SCANDISK to fix the different free space on the smaller HD.


Fred H

[Wombat]

I just thought I'd come back and report on how I finally got this to work.

I ghosted over my main partition to the new drive, but Windows wouldn't boot without my old drive around. It was <I>using</I> the new drive (it was my H drive, and the system drive), but wouldn't boot without the old C attached.

Here's what finally worked:
* Did the Ghost.
* removed my old drive.
* Used my slipstream CD to do an installation/repair. (and it said it was repairing a C:\WINDOWS install).
* XP finally booted on just the new drive, but it STILL thought it was H.
* Used Anand's registry trick to edit the drive letters.
* XP once again would NOT boot.
* Did another install/repair.

Finally have the new drive as C, and happy.

[Fred H]

Just a similar question, but not exactly:
I plan to build a new PC.
Is there any way to re-ghost another system to a new one?
I mean the old is AMD based, the new will be P4.
Is it too wild to think about it?
Fred H

[Wombat]

It's not too wild, but when I did it, I had to deltree the windows directory to get things working right. Nothing got the HAL working quite right until I did that.

[Fred H]

Thanks. Beter to clean install, anyway.

Fred H