Moving Windows XP to another partition

[ultrum]

Hi:

I have 4 partitions on my hard disk. I installed Windows XP
on the first partition. Now, I want to copy it to the second
partition for future problems.

I used both Ghost and PartitionMagic to copy partition 1 to 2.
I see both modified the boot.ini file and made the second
partition bootable. Without modifying the partition order,
and keeping both the original and replica Windows XP's,
I can boot. But, if I check under disk management, partition 1
shows as page partition and partition 2 shows as system partition.
This is not what I want, since if the OS on partition 1 crashes,
I won't be able to boot partition 2 either. When I formatted
partition 1 and made partition 2 as active partition that's
what happened. Windows XP booted, I received login window,
I loginned, I saw "Loading your personal settings" message,
a blue screen came up with no icon, and booting froze. Booting
did not go any further. When I booted to dos prompt, I found that
on partition 1 "Program Files" directory was created. This means that
although boot is pointing to partition 2 correctly, windows components
are still looking for the Program Files and maybe other system, windows
files under partition 1.

I also tried deleting MountedDevices registry key, but this did not help.

So shortly, how can I make Windows XP to think that everything is under
partition 2 and partition 2 is now the c: drive?

I will eally appreciate any help.

Thanks.

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

Ultrum,

I did some experimenting with this quite a while back. The trick is to
remove the Mounted Devices key first, then copy the partition. The other
aspect is, I was using BootIt Next Generation, as a boot manager, and not
XP's built in boot manager. Setting the "clone" partition as the Active one
should have the same effect, but I couldn't guarantee this.

--
Doug Knox, MS-MVP Windows XP/ Windows Smart Display
Win 95/98/Me/XP Tweaks and Fixes
http://www.dougknox.com
--------------------------------
Associate Expert
ExpertZone - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
--------------------------------
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"ultrum" > wrote in message
om...
> Hi:
>
> I have 4 partitions on my hard disk. I installed Windows XP
> on the first partition. Now, I want to copy it to the second
> partition for future problems.
>
> I used both Ghost and PartitionMagic to copy partition 1 to 2.
> I see both modified the boot.ini file and made the second
> partition bootable. Without modifying the partition order,
> and keeping both the original and replica Windows XP's,
> I can boot. But, if I check under disk management, partition 1
> shows as page partition and partition 2 shows as system partition.
> This is not what I want, since if the OS on partition 1 crashes,
> I won't be able to boot partition 2 either. When I formatted
> partition 1 and made partition 2 as active partition that's
> what happened. Windows XP booted, I received login window,
> I loginned, I saw "Loading your personal settings" message,
> a blue screen came up with no icon, and booting froze. Booting
> did not go any further. When I booted to dos prompt, I found that
> on partition 1 "Program Files" directory was created. This means that
> although boot is pointing to partition 2 correctly, windows components
> are still looking for the Program Files and maybe other system, windows
> files under partition 1.
>
> I also tried deleting MountedDevices registry key, but this did not help.
>
> So shortly, how can I make Windows XP to think that everything is under
> partition 2 and partition 2 is now the c: drive?
>
> I will eally appreciate any help.
>
> Thanks.

[ultrum]

Larry, you are outstanding. I did exactly what you suggested.
And, it worked. Now, I am writing from my second partition.
Thanks a lot. This was such a big hurdle.

Dan, thank you for your suggestion as well. I got the idea
of deleting MountedDevices registers from your previous posts.
That did not work, but I did not try using a seperate boot loader.

Have a nice day.

"Larry(LJL269)" > wrote in message >...
> I just cloned XPhome & setup dual boot 2 XPs by:

[ultrum]

Sorry it was Doug, not Dan. Thanks.
---------------------------------------
Larry, you are outstanding. I did exactly what you suggested.
And, it worked. Now, I am writing from my second partition.
Thanks a lot. This was such a big hurdle.

Dan, thank you for your suggection as well. I got the idea
of deleting MountedDevices registers from your previous posts.
That did not work, but I did not try to use a seperate boot loader.
------------------------------------------------
"Doug Knox MS-MVP" > wrote in message >...
> Ultrum,
>
> I did some experimenting with this quite a while back. The trick is to
> remove the Mounted Devices key first, then copy the partition. The other
> aspect is, I was using BootIt Next Generation, as a boot manager, and not
> XP's built in boot manager. Setting the "clone" partition as the Active one
> should have the same effect, but I couldn't guarantee this.
>