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Move Boot.ini file

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10 replies

by rtd.steele

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I have 2 hard drives in my PC and both had windows XP installed (dual boot). One of my drives failed so I replaced it and installed a fresh copy of XP. However my boot.ini file is on the other drive. I want to put the boot.ini file on my new drive because I want to format the other drive. Can I do this and how

10 replies

by slayer_

If your drive failed, you can't get the files off it, sorry. And you certainly can't format it.

by clarkd038

You can plug it in to an external usb drive enclosure. From there you should be able to access the files on the drive, and pull the old boot.ini. but you should run diagnostics on the drive to see if it is any good before you try to reinstall another OS on it.

by rtd.steele

My boot.ini file is not on the failed drive, it is on the other drive that did not fail (D). I removed the failed drive and I have now added a new drive (C) and installed windows XP on it. The boot.ini file for this new installation is on my second (good) drive (D). How do I move it to the C drive so I can reformat my D drive.

by slayer_

And copy it over... you said you had a clean install of XP on one, just copy it over using that clean XP. Boot.ini is not locked when your system is running. It's probably the ultimate vunlerability in Windows. A virus just has to delete boot.ini and your system is crippled.

by rtd.steele

So even if the boot.ini file is moved to another drive that will not cause a problem with boot-up. I hate to mess with the boot.ini file but if you are sure...

by slayer_

If we say, you have C drive and D drive

C drive is your booting drive, D drive is blank.

You CANNOT move boot.ini to the D drive from the C drive, that will break the C drive.

You CAN copy the boot.ini file, and your C drive will still be bootable.

If your D and C are both bootable, and your intent is to copy your C boot.ini to D boot.ini, a copy should work fine HOWEVER it might break your D drive installation. you can keep a backup of your D drives boot.ini.

If neither of these answers what you are trying to do, than can you please clarify your intentions? Why do you want to move a boot.ini file?

by rtd.steele

My C drive (new) is my main XP boot drive. D drive (older) contains an XP installation and data and it also contain the boot.ini file for both XP installations. I want to reformat D but it contains the boot.ini file. Can I just move it to the C drive?

by seanferd

between old and new drive setups, yes, you can probably just copy it over. Read the file before you copy it to check for any obvious problems, and back up the boot.ini from the current C: drive first.

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