Need help using Partition Magic to change my (G:) partition to (C:)

Thanks to help from several of you here I
was successful installing XPSP2 to my (G partition and it works perfectly
but now I need more help. Both installations of XPSP2 are on NTFS primary
partitions and now I would like to somehow move (G to the first Disk and
change the drive letter to (C and hide the present (C drive but I'm not
sure how to proceed. Do I need to first copy the present C:\boot.ini to G:\
as (G does not have a boot.ini? Does it need to be changed in any way?

According to Disk Management -
Disk 0 contains (C and is labeled "System "
Disk 1 contains (G and is labeled "Boot "

This is the boot.ini which is on (C -
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "XP 2005" /fastdetect
/NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "XP" /fastdetect=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "SafeMode "
/fastdetect/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog


Should I use Partition Magic and

Copy (G Partition to Unallocated space at beginning of first disk
Set this partition Active and hide the original (C
Change Drive Letter to (C

I thought I should also add Drive Mapper before applying the changes BUT
Partition Magic tells me I must make the changes first.

I plan to eliminate the present (C if (G still works okay after the
move.

 

I don't know if this can be done with the boot.ini or not (I kind of doubt it) so you'll have to wait for someone else to comment on that. That said, I think it would be best to install Boot Magic and use it as a boot manager instead of XP's. Ordinarily I wouldn't say that but with what you're trying to accomplish here it probably would be the easiest way to do it. In Boot Magic you can select which partition you want to be the default and you can also choose which partitions to hide from each of the two OS's.

The only thing to be aware of is the possibility of drive letter changes when you hide one or more of the partitions. From reading your other post it sounds like the g: drive is currently on the second hard disk. If it is, and if it's on the first partition on that disk, I don't think you'll have any drive letters changing other than the one the OS is on. G will become C. I could be wrong about no changes but I used to have a computer set up in a similar fashion and had no problems with drive letters. Assuming both OS's are on primary partitions like you said and both of those partitions are the first partitions on each of the drives, you shouldn't have any problem.

If you hide more than just the OS partition you could have problems. That would depend on where the additional partition(s) you hide are located on the disks.

If you decide to use Boot Magic be sure to create a rescue disk for it. You'll find a shortcut for this in the Boot Magic group in the start menu. If, in the future, something happens (changes in the partition table for example) where you can't boot to windows you can boot from the rescue disk and use it to straighten things out. Also, I'd check the help file before you install it. It seems to me it had to be installed on the first partition on the first disk which would be your original windows. I could be wrong on this but it wouldn't hurt to check it out first.

 

Thanks for the reply Zander. The more I mess with computers the less I seem to know about them.

I thought the installation to the G partition had gone well...I had
installed the latest versions of all the software and I had stuff tweaked to
my liking which took three weeks! XP's Boot Manager works OK. Then I discovered I was not sure how to change the location to the C partition on the first hard drive. I don't think the drive letters changing would be a problem as G is the first partition on the second hard drive. I thought about making an image using Drive Image and copy the drive to C BUT that would probably leave me unable to boot the computer without boot.ini and also my programs would not work without changing the G references to C somehow.

MAYBE the only solution for me is to again install XPSP2 and this time
install it on the C drive. I just hate to think about having to redo all of
that stuff again.

 

Well, Boot Magic or something similar is the only way (or safe way at least) that I know of. One nice thing about using Boot Magic is that if things do get messed up due to drive letter changes after you hide the one OS from the other, you can always unhide the hidden partition and at least be back to where you started.

 

Thanks again Zander. Wish I knew more about this stuff or one of you smart guys lived next door...I'm confused. I had Boot Magic installed before I installed XP to G but had to uninstall it before I could get XP to install.

I found this in the Boot Magic pdf files.
Operating system will not boot (bootstrapping issues). If you have two operating
systems that are based on Windows NT (that is, Windows NT, Windows 2000, or
Windows XP) and one of the operating systems is bootstrapping off of the other one,
BootMagic will not work properly for the bootstrapped OS. By default, BootMagic hides
any primary partitions other than the one you choose to boot from. If it hides a partition
that includes the NTLDR and BOOT.INI file (system files that are shared in a
bootstrapped environment), the computer will not boot. There are three ways to resolve
this problem:
•Make sure only one primary partition is visible when you install an NT-based OS, so
that the NTLDR and BOOT.INI are installed in both OS partitions. (This option
avoids bootstrapping, so both operating systems can boot on their own.)
•Use the NT loader menu to boot into the OS you want instead of using BootMagic.
•You may have a bootstrapped operating system but still want to use BootMagic
because you have additional operating systems that are not bootstrapped. In this case,
you should remove the option for the bootstrapped operating system from the
BootMagic menu and choose that OS from the NTLDR menu instead. For example,
assume you had three operating systems installed: Windows 2000, Windows XP, and
Windows 98. If Windows XP were bootstrapped off Windows 2000, it would not
boot if you chose it from the BootMagic configuration menu because BootMagic
would hide the Windows 2000 partition that included critical system files. Instead,
you should make the Windows XP partition visible from the Windows 2000 partition
(see "Configuring BootMagic to Work on an NTFS System" on page 95) and remove
Windows XP from the BootMagic configuration. You would then have two options
on the BootMagic menu: Windows 2000 and Windows 98. You could choose
Windows 98 to boot it directly. If you chose Windows 2000, the NTLDR menu would
appear, allowing you to boot either Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

??I'm not sure what all of that means but maybe I can't use Boot Magic?? I suppose it would not work to simply copy the boot.ini file I have in C to G:\ and also copy ntldr to G:\.
I have ntldr in G:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386\ntldr but this is the only boot.ini file I have on G:\WINDOWS\pss\boot.ini.backup
(this seems identical to the file in C except I had changed the timeout from 8 to 3 seconds
[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "XP 2005" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "XP" /fastdetect=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "SafeMode" /fastdetect/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog

 

You have two NT based operating systems (you're booting to two different WinXP systems) so this does apply to you. It brings up a possible problem I hadn't really thought about. What bootsrapping means is that one of the OS's relies on the other one for certain system files it needs to boot. If this is the way yours is set up, and you used Boot Magic and hid each OS from the other, one of the OS's would fail to boot because the partition that has the boot files needed is hidden and it won't be able to find them. The OS that's on the partition with the boot files would boot, the other wouldn't. If an OS isn't bootstrapped to another, you should find boot.ini, ntdlr, and ntdect.com in the root of the drive. Any of these files that you find elsewhere such as the ones you found in windows\pss won't do what you need. They need to be in the root.

Have a look in the root of your c: drive. From what you've stated in the past that's the drive that contains your original Windows installtion and it should have these three files. Then look in the root of the g: drive and see if they are there. From what you've said it sounds like they aren't. If this is the case the OS on the g: drive is definitly bootstrapped to the c: drive and won't boot unless the c: drive is visible (or not hidden).

I must confess to being somewhat at a disadvantage here as I've never used Boot Magic with any NT based system. I've only used it with Win9x and Linux so about all I can do is throw out a best guess suggestion (which is what you already asked about). I wouldn't be afraid to try it but I can't say it would be a sure thing or that it wouldn't cause some other type of problem. That said, here it is. You could try copying those three files to the g: drive (besides boot.ini and ntldr be sure to also copy ntdetect.com) , then use Boot Magic to hide each of the OS's from each other. Then reboot and see if you're able to boot the the g: drive. I really don't know for sure if it will or not but if it doesn't you can always reboot and boot to the Windows on the c: drive. This should work because that drive has the boot files needed, on it. Once you're back in Windows you could use Boot Magic to unhide the two OS's from each other. Once you do this you should be able to boot to either partition again but you'll pretty much be right back where you started except that you'd have Boot Magic installed. This wouldn't be what you want of course but at least things would still work.

Assuming it will boot to the g drive by doing this I do see one possible problem with trying this (copying the files to the g drive). If you do this and then boot to g: drive be sure to select it when the NT boot menu appears. Otherwise, I think what would happen is, it will try to boot to the partition that's listed as the defaut in the boot.ini. This would be the one on the c drive and of course would fail because you have that partition hidden. So, boot the computer, choose the Windows on the g drive in Boot Magic and when the NT loader appears once again select the Windows on the g drive. If it boots it should be easy enough to edit the boot.ini on the g drive so that you wouldn't have to select it a second time in the NT loader. Guess we can leave that for later though.

As I said before, I really don't know if this will work or not. You can give it a try or maybe wait a bit and see if somebody else has a suggestion or can comment on whether this will work or not. Whatever the case, as I said in my previous post, if you use Boot Magic, be sure to make a Boot Magic recovery disk. This is just the type of thing it's good for.

 

Recently I tried several times to use Partition Magic 8.0 and make a small Fat 32 partition which I could use to install Boot Magic 8.0 but I had numerous problems trying to get Boot Magic to install and work correctly with my NTFS partitions. Thank goodness for my Partition Magic Rescue Disk.

Today I copied boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com from the C partition on Disk 1 to the G partition on Disk 2. I decided to use the Copy Drive feature of Drive Image 2002 and attempt to copy my (G) partition from disk 2 to unallocated space located on the first part of disk 1. This just took a few minutes and my computer booted up OK. I did not assign a partition letter but something seemed to think I wanted to called it "I ". The partition was even added to the XP Boot Loader!

I opened Partition Magic and made the I partition active which hid the C partition and again the computer booted...I was really surprised as I did not expect it to work.

Next I opened Partition Magic and changed the Partition letter for I to C and Partition Magic automatically run Drive Mapper and searched for I and replaced it with C. Again the computer booted. ALL of my programs work just fine.

This is what my boot.ini on C looks like and I probably need to change it somehow when I figure out how it should be but at least it works...at times I was not sure this computer would ever boot up again. I still have the original installation of XP on Disk 1 but I have it hidden using Partition Magic.

[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "XP 2005" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "SafeMode" /fastdetect/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS= "XP 2005 Disk2" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

I had decided I probably needed to install XP again to get it where I wanted it so I am very happy. I have a LOT of programs so I was not looking forward to installing them again. Thanks again Zander for your patience. Without your help I would not have known I needed to copy those files and probably would not have been successfiul.