Andrew said:
Luckily the Recovery CD had a 'non-destructive system recovery'
option which meant that it should just put a fresh copy of WinXP over
the old one which preserves the users files, programs and emails so I
ran this and happily the USB mouse and keyboard now work (problem
solved I thought!).
Another problem has arisen though.
When the computer boots up it now just puts up a newly installed copy
of WinXP without any users files, programs and emails (recovery
partition?) so I don't know what has gone wrong.
In Device Manager disk C and D is showing with:
Disk C just showing a basic copy of Windows XP with no users files,
programs and emails.
Disk D contains the users files, programs and emails as before.
It looks like the system is booting from C whereas I want it to boot
from D but in BIOS the two disks are shown as RAID_0, I think and
there is not an option to boot from either Disk C or Disk D.
How are you getting Device Manager to show you drive letters and contents?
Computer Management/Disk Management will show drive letters, did you mean
that? However, Computer Management/Disk Management won't show
contents...how did you get that?
______________
I may be a dummy but is there anyway I could get the system to boot
from Disk D instead of Disk C?
There are two 250GB hard drives inside the computer. If there is no
way to get the system to boot from Disk D would uncoupling one of the
drives possibly work?
Many thanks
Andrew
I assume that
was your original OS, correct? If so then either...
a) you did not tell the recovery disc where to install XP, or...
b) the recovery disc is hard wired to always use C:
If it was a) just do it again but specify drive D: as the location. After
doing so successfully, you can just delete all Windows folders from C:
If it was b), booting from drive D: will do you no good as that has the
Windows install that was messed up in the first place.
_________________
However, booting from the new XP install on C: shouldn't be much of a
problem.
Even though your installed programs are not wired into the C: registry, most
will run just fine. If they need registry entries, they will create them
the first time you run them; however, you would have to reset any options
within the program(s) if you changed them from the default; additionally,
any programs that required you to enter a key would agan ask for the key.
Your personal stuff on D: is just as availble to you if you boot from C: as
it is if you boot from D:
All your emails still exist on D: too, but the new OE on C: doesn't know
about them. The simplest way to solve that is to use the OE on D: To do
that, find msimn.exe on D: - should be at "D:\Program Files\Outlook
Express\msimn.exe"- and use it.
Assuming you are booting from C:, does the Start/Programs menu contain the
programs you added on D:? Probably doesn't and those could be copied to the
relavent location on C: too. However, a greater problem might be with the
stuff in D:\Documents and Settings.
________________
No doubt your best solution is to get an "over the top" install of XP onto
D:. If your situation is b) above, I'm not quite sure how to accomplish
that. If it were me, I think I'd try physically swapping C: and D: data
cables and redoing your recovery disk. Afterwards, use Computer
Management/Disk Management to change C: to D:, shut down swap C: and D:
drives again.
Please understand I'm just sort of mulling over possibilities in this
section. Doing the above might require a boot.ini file in the root of C:
When Windows is starting up, it uses that file to determine the location of
Windows. It follows this format:
http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/bootini.htm
I am not sure what your recovery disk is...it *sounds* as if it was provided
by the computer manufacturer to restore the computer software to the
condition it was when you bought it. However, since it had a
'non-destructive system recovery' option, it sounds as if it has a
plain-Jane XP install too complete with recovery console. If that is the
case, it should also have the FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands as well, both of
which might be needed.
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsf/p/fixboot.htm
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsf/p/fixmbr.htm
Note that I haven't commented on what effect your RAID might have as I have
zero knowledge of it.
Finally, if everything works fine as it is now, don't mess with it.
--
dadiOH
____________________________
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