Boot Drive letter change, Please HELP urgent attention needed

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rq2000 - 29 May 2008 23:06 GMT

I recently added an internal Western Digital 500 GB SATA2 Drive into a
fairly new computer(less than two months old Phenom 9600) I used the included
software to attempt to format and partition the drive into 4 sections. I
wanted to makle this my primary drive so I could take out the old 30 GB drive
I had laying around that was very slow. The software included was DATA
LIFEGUARD TOOLS and GOOGLE software. The partitions initailly were set up
backwards of how I wanted so I started over again and attempted to do it
opposite of the way I had previously. This time it worked like it should
have in the begining and set it up like I had told it to do, not how I
actually wanted it to be. I had it set it up as a boot partition so my main
drive was copied (taking several hours which surprised me 22GB would take
that long) After seeing that XP was copied to a FAT32 partition I thought it
wouldn't possibly load correctly and was meaning to change it. Before I got
the opportunity my power failed computer shutdown and rebooted but hung on
startup right before login screen. So I put in my Windows XP disk and
attempted a repair install. After running what appeared to be a regular
install I managed to get my main drive back up and running but the drive
letter was changed (from drive C: to drive E:) ; however, most of my
services are now not working as they are set to DRIVE C: . This is
completely frustrating as now I can't even use IE7 and attempting to do so
brings a failure and starts dr. watson error reporting with a link I can't go
to and brings about another dr watson report. PLEASE HELP ME. My questions
are after reading KB223188 How to restore a the system boot drive letter in
Windows once this is done will I still have to do another repair. Also why is
it necessary to have the backup utility included in windows use a FLOPPY
DRIVE to save the information to even begin to use. I was under the
impression that this was going to be fixed in the next service pack (SP3) so
a USB drive would be sufficient to store the information needed for the
restore. Since I do NOT HAVE a Floppy drive in this machine, should I try and
salvage one from an old machine just to make a backup of my data BEFORE
attempting to fix the drive letter issue?

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DL - 30 May 2008 07:46 GMT

The backup application included with winxp was written in the days when cd's
did not exist & has not being updated.
There are numerous third party backup applications.
There is no need to use third party tools to partition/format the new drive,
winxp has all the tools required, using third party tools can cause
problems, and unless you have a very good reason for using fat32 you should
be using ntfs.
You dont mention what you used to copy your winxp partition.

>I recently added an internal Western Digital 500 GB SATA2 Drive into a
> fairly new computer(less than two months old Phenom 9600) I used the
[quoted text clipped - 37 lines]
> salvage one from an old machine just to make a backup of my data BEFORE
> attempting to fix the drive letter issue?

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rq2000 - 30 May 2008 21:57 GMT

But I did mention what I had used to make the partitions AND to copy the
existing drive, Western Digitals software -DATA LIFEGUARD TOOLS. I am not
very pleased with it to say the least. But my issue isn't really with the
SATA drive it is TRYING to bring the EXISTING one back from having its drive
letter changed from C: to E: while leaving most of the Services it was
running as the C: drive letter so now most of them aren't working at all,
including my Norton AV or even Internet Explorer just for starters.
Is it possible to use XPs backup with a usb thumb drive instead of a floppy?
If I do follow the other steps in KB223188 what else will I need to do to get
the drive back in working order?

> The backup application included with winxp was written in the days when cd's
> did not exist & has not being updated.
[quoted text clipped - 46 lines]
> > salvage one from an old machine just to make a backup of my data BEFORE
> > attempting to fix the drive letter issue?

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DL - 31 May 2008 01:12 GMT

If you reboot a sys, either by a sys reboot or otherwise, when you have
cloned your drive the boot drive letter will not be as intended. Its not the
fault of the cloning app, but a fact of life.
Currently your boot sector will be on C, whilst your win drive will be
something else.
Personally I would start from scratch. As soon as the clone has completed
you have to shut down your sys, disconnect the original C drive, before
rebooting, and only connecting the old C once you are satisfied your sys is
operational.
And if you reside in an area prown to brown outs you should consider a UPS

WinXp backup only works in conjunction with a floppy, it doesnt recognise
cd's or usb

> But I did mention what I had used to make the partitions AND to copy the
> existing drive, Western Digitals software -DATA LIFEGUARD TOOLS. I am not
[quoted text clipped - 80 lines]
>> > salvage one from an old machine just to make a backup of my data BEFORE
>> > attempting to fix the drive letter issue?

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Anteaus - 31 May 2008 07:33 GMT

Ensure that the partition containing the OS is the Active partition, on the
first disk in the boot order. Then repeat the repair install.

Your mistake was failing to do this the first time.

With the powerfail during setup it might be too late now to remedy the
situation, but worth a try anyway.

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