XP assigned to wrong drive letter, won't boot!

[Gradient]

Hi everyone. During my attempts to get Leopard OSX to run on my laptop, I managed to set my primary partition from C: to E:, meaning that my laptop now attempts to boot Windows from the E: drive. The resulting error message 'operating system missing' on startup is thus of no surprise.

I can load the XP recovery disk and enter the recovery console, etc, but I'm not sure what I need to be typing in order to set the primary partition back to C. XP is absolutely fine, the computer is just looking for it in the wrong place. Any help?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[pdyckman@comcas]

I read your situation. I have never done this all the way through but I think I can direct you to a place where you can make the decision to: "change drive letter and paths". I went to 'control panel'...selected 'admin. tools'...opened 'computer management'...looked to the left and saw 'storage'...below that is 'disc management'...left clicked on that and got the display of all partitions on the disc, their corresponding letters, what's on them, everything. You have a list in the upper portion of the partition assignment window. Nearer the bottom you will have an illustrated display of each partition and it's entire status. When you right click on any partition (either on the list...or illustration) you are given the opportunity to 'change drive letter and paths' and other choices like 'delete logical drive'...'format'...etc. I believe that this is the place where you will reassign your program to be on the partition that you want it to be on. Good Luck.

 

[Cinders]

And since the OP can't actually boot into Windows that info is no help to him. And since I can't actually help you either, I should have kept my mouth shut. I will say that the Recovery Console should help you. It's on your Windows XP install disk and here is a link to the commands.

 

[Gradient]

Thanks. I've managed to delete the other partition and get it back to just the C drive. However, I have a new problem now. XP doesn't boot; I had a message on startup relating to ntldr, which after a bit of googling I fixed by copying some files from the xp disc using recovery console. Now, the flashing underscore that appears before the windows loading screen initialises is all that appears, and the hard drive light flickers constantly. It's clearly trying to load XP, but it can't seem to do it, and none of the recovery console commands have made a difference. Also, I have to select the hard drive to boot from on startup, or it simply skips it and tries to boot from the other devices (DVD drive, etc). Thoughts?

 

[Cinders]

Me thinks the boot sector is messed up. I also think you need to try the FIXBOOT command and see what you can do to get things back in order. I don't have any experience with your problem. When confronted with something like this I usually repartition, reformat and reinstall. That's the easy way for me. I don't usually have files I can't afford to lose, and if I do I back them up to a second computer. You on the otherhand my be in a different position. I don't know. Give the Command Console another shot and try FIXBOOT, and let us know what happened.

 

[Gradient]

FIXBOOT didn't work, I'm afraid. I've tried various other options such as BOOTCFG, but nothing is making a difference. I've backed up everything I need, so it may be best if I do a fresh install like you suggested.