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Trying to convert Fat32 drive to NTFS drive – dual boot situation

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Hello All,

Here is the situation:

I have two drives in my computer. My old drive is a Fat32 drive (C drive) that I had windows 98 on. I then upgraded my computer and added a new drive with windows XP on it (E drive). When I boot up it asks me to choose between starting up with Windows XP and a drive with an unspecified OS on it. I always choose to load with the E drive with Windows XP.

I have been getting alot of IE errors and IE wont download updates. So I thought to rectify this drive situation in case this is part of the issue.

I now moved all the info I want to keep from my C drive to my E drive. And I tried to format the old C drive from Fat32 to NTFS but it will not giving an error about it could not do it.

I then unplugged the old C drive hoping to just boot from the Windows XP drive but it wouldnt let me.

Can someone help me with the steps I need to make to just have the E drive now be my C drive and boot from that and the old C drive to become just an extra NTFS drive to hold info?

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to Trying to convert Fat32 drive to NTFS drive – dual boot situation

Clarifications

Read This

In reply to Trying to convert Fat32 drive to NTFS drive – dual boot situation

Then print it out and read it again. Be careful, go one step at a time don’t delete anything or format anything until you’re sure that you can boot from the “new” drive.

What am I supposed to be reading?

In reply to Read This

I dont see anything attached or to print. Am I missing something?

No, I am!

In reply to What am I supposed to be reading?

I forgot to do the paste thing. Sorry, I’m old and busy but that’s no excuse.

http://www.techimo.com/forum/applications-operating-systems/84083-change-boot-drive-dual-boot-system.html

Oh my

In reply to No, I am!

That is quite the long involved post…I will definately read through it when I get home. Obviously its alittle more involved than I hoped it was….isnt it alway? lol

Still having issue

In reply to Read This

I think I did something wrong….

I copied the 3 boot files from the C drive to the E drive (windows XP drive) and I disabled the C drive by unplugging it and then I tried to boot from the Windows XP drive and it gave me this error:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk network configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check the boot path and disk hardware.

Soooo…..I’m pretty I missed something somewhere. What did I miss? Is it possible to boot from a drive called E? And how can I change it to C drive? Where do I go to do this?

Have you changed the cable connection yet?…

In reply to Still having issue

You’ll have to connect the XP Drive at the same point on the IDE cable that the old [C drive] was connected to.

And….

In reply to Read This

this is what my boot.ini file looks like

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\ = “Unidentified operating system on drive C.”

Survey Says…

In reply to Trying to convert Fat32 drive to NTFS drive – dual boot situation

Welcome to the world of ‘MODERN’ PCs….

Try this

In reply to Trying to convert Fat32 drive to NTFS drive – dual boot situation

Boot from your XP CD and at the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to repair the installation.
Type the number of the Windows installation that you want to repair, 1 and then press ENTER.
Type the administrator password, and then press ENTER.

At the recovery command prompt type in these commands pressing the Enter key after each one.

diskpart

select disk 0

select partition 1

active

Now type

EXIT to exit the diskpart session

fixmbr

fixboot

Restart the PC with the XP CD removed.

One more step

In reply to Try this

When you get into the Recovery Console you will be at:

C:\Windows

We need to change to the C:\> prompt

Type CD .. and press Enter

Type attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini and press Enter

Type del boot.ini and press Enter

Type bootcfg /rebuild and press Enter

So it goes like this?

In reply to Try this

Boot from your XP CD and at the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to repair the installation.
Type the number of the Windows installation that you want to repair, 1 and then press ENTER.
Type the administrator password, and then press ENTER.

At the recovery command prompt type in these commands:

We need to change to the C:\> prompt

Type CD .. and press Enter

Type attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini and press Enter

Type del boot.ini and press Enter

Type bootcfg /rebuild and press Enter

diskpart

select disk 0

select partition 1

active

Now type

EXIT to exit the diskpart session

fixmbr

fixboot

Restart the PC with the XP CD removed.

Type bootcfg /rebuild and press Enter

In reply to So it goes like this?

after fixboot and you should be able to boot from the drive. The problem is that the Partition is not Active and your Boot.ini is referencing the wrong disk. By running these commands you are making the drive bootable.

Jackie: Make sure you send the bill for tech support

In reply to Type bootcfg /rebuild and press Enter

3 suggestions [or was that 4] equates to 5 thumbs…

only 100 more to break the 1000 barrier

and about 4000 more to catch up with The Chas.

LOL

In reply to Jackie: Make sure you send the bill for tech support

we haven’t started on the second drive yet. 😉

I’m only shooting for 953 at the moment and I think TheChas is pretty safe. He isn’t as active as he used to be but he is slowly building them up and that is good to see. 😉

I’m really glad to see that you didn’t pull up the stumps when you hit the millenium. 😉

[Author]

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