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Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

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Hi

I have a single 160GB drive PC that came with Windows XP Home as drive C: In order to run Visual Studio.NET 2003 and IIS I later added Windows XP Professional SP2 as partition D:

I now wish Windows XP Professional SP2 (partition D:) to become my one and only master boot Drive C: and delete the original drive C:

How can I delete Windows XP home (drive C:) and move (or clone to another disk), partition D to become a bootable drive C: without starting from a clean install.

I have used both Norton Ghost v8 & v9 and Drive Image v5.3 to clone partition D: to the new hard drive but on rebooting with the new disk as master (no other drives fitted) the PC will not boot ?Invalid system disk? even after Fdisk /mbr or BootFix.

The only success I have had is to clone both partitions C: & D: to a new disk.

cheers

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Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

I do not beleive that it is viable and or possible to do this. Your best bet to “move” the partition from d: to C: is to start over with fresh install on the c: partition, and copy the data you need from the d: partition.

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

Thank you all for replying. I will start from scratch and install XP Pro as the primary partition C:

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

You can not clone the D Partition to the C Partition as when you install XP on anything but the primary Partition it writes files to the C Drive/Partition which will be missing when you clone the Drive/Partition over to the C Drive/Partition.

Your only alternative to to strip out the original XP Home and load XP Pro to the primary partition and then move all your data back there and install your software to where you want it.

Col

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

You could also perform an [b]In Place Upgrade[/b] by following the directions here and overwriting XP Home with Pro

http://tinyurl.com/g4bv8

But that would still leave Pro on the second partition and even if you removed it physically you’ll still get the Dual Boot option at the beginning of Boot UP and it will default to the nonexistent installation of XP so you’ll need to do some editing to stop this from happening.

But I still think you’ll be better off backing up all your data wiping the Drive/s and reinstalling from scratch.

Col

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

Thanks

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

Ghosting D: to C: and making it bootable can be done but the programs would not work. They were installed in D not C.
You may have to replace any reference of D: with C: in Registry but it is such a daunting task and there is no guaranty that it would work.

Options
1. Delete Windows XP Home in C: and edit boot.ini to boot to Windows XP Pro in D: automatically. However, you cannot or delete or format C: because it is the System Partition. You may use C: as an additional back up space. If the space is not desired, use Partition magic to reduce C: and add to D:.

2. Backup data and delete all partitions. Clean install Windows XP Pro in C: and reinstall all the programs.

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

Thanks

Reply To: Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

In reply to Move Clone Win XP partition D to a bootable C

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