XP/98 Dual Boot (SP1)

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I originally had Win98 installed on drive C. I installed a new install of XP Pro on the E drive. I am now satisfied that XP is the OS of choice. I’ve deleted Win98 from the C drive.

How do I move XP and all apps from the E drive to the C drive, WITHOUT doing a total re-install of everything?

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Sorry, I don’t think you can do that, but wait….. let someone else comment too, to be sure.

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It is possible, but NOT RECOMMENDED. To do so, you must copy system files from your system to your boot partition, edit boot.ini file, edit Registry, from outside Windows delete your boot partition and make your system partition primary and active or copy partition E: to C: , with big chunk of luck boot to Windows in Safe mode and check the Registry once again changing all mentions of E: drive to C: .

Believe me, deleting all partitions and reinstalling Windows is much more easier.

Fof your consideration:
MSKB Article 289022HOW TO: Edit the Boot.ini File in Windows XP
MSKB Article 223188 HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows

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I concur with Al – there’s just no easy way to do it. You can remove Win98 from the boot loader menu, but moving the OS itself…..risky business at best. Many (but not all) programs will create Windows Registry entries that direct themselves and other applications to their installed location. Moving program files is something that needs to be done on a case by case basis and isn’t guaranteed to work, unlike the Mac way of doing things for example.

What I would seriously consider is the need to do this. If it’s just to have your working Windows installation on the C: drive, it’s really not necessary, since as you can see it works just fine where it is. You could use the free space on the C: drive for other purposes, such as moving My Documents there and keeping your data separated from the operating system. But again, the only real clean way to accomplish this, whatever the reason, is to do a full format and reinstall (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing anyway).

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Tnx Camphill for asking my question for me and tnx everyone for once again answering my question without me even asking. this lounge.

But please clarify for your resident red head. It appears that I can install XP to partition drive D: without reformating the partition drive C: Then once I know I can get to my inventory and data still on C: I could remove 98SE from C: without removing my data files. And continue to boot from XP on D: And use C: as a backup as I now use D: I think what I am questioning is do the “drives” have to be physically seperate HDs or can I format and install on a partition drive without doing a reformat on both partitions.

Woops that doesn’t take into consideration the other PROGRAM files which would still be on C: Do I really have to reinstall everything?

OK so what I should do is take it to a tech. But I really would like to learn more of this for myself.

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Bookbox – whatever you do, don’t format the C: partition, period. Even though Windows XP isn’t installed there, the boot loader and several critical files are located there, and if you format you won’t be booting into anything. You can delete the Windows 98 installation folder safely, but don’t remove anything at the root of the drive.

The drives do not need to be physically separate entities. From within Windows, the difference between a logical drive and a physical one are transparent. You can format any other partition that you like, provided of course, that it’s not the partition containing XP.

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