moving boot sector

[scott27]

After removing one XP OS from a dual boot setup, my boot sector remains on the redundant disc (F drive, 20GB). The OS I'm using and all the installed programs are on C drive (13GB) which is now full. I want to get the boot sector onto the same disc as the rest of the system, so I can format the larger drive and transfer the whole OS and programs over as a disc image to it or to some larger drive. I have tried transferring the boot files to the C drive, editing boot.ini appropriately etc, but the system will not boot without the F drive installed and enabled with the original boot sector. Is there a step I'm missing here, or is this not possible?
Any ideas? Thanks

 

[Phantasm66]

Yes, restore the files from the boot partition's root dir, ensure boot.ini is edited correctly, then boot from your Windows XP CD. Choose not to install but to repair, then issue these commands

fixmbr
fixboot

then reboot, all should now be well.

 

[DigitAlex]

by the way, phant

is there a way to have win2000 fix the mbr ?

like if I have 98 on C, 2000 on D and i wand to install 98 again (clean), and then I usually run the install program from windows, doing as if I was installing 2000 again, but then when it reboots, the mbr is patched OK and i just choose the old 2000 install and remove the line from boot.ini

is there a way to do the same thing otherwise ?

is there any neat application to save / restore boot records of disks and partition ?

do you think such a thing could be useful and would have sense ? if so, I could create such a tool .... (im a developer)

 

[Rick]

Windows 2000 is the same process as Phantasm's "XP guide" up there.

There are programs which save and restore MBRs etc... And for that reason they have use.

Rather than backup and restore though or spend the time to develop the tool itself, I'd just rather fix it when the time comes the good ol' fashioned way.

 

[DigitAlex]

the good old fashioned way ? hmmm

the way I explained or the way phant explained (which are not that different, btw)