Transferring Windows XP Home to a new drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Harry
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Harry

I recently added a new 160 GB Western Digital hard drive
to my system and made it the master. I made the original
80 GB WD hard drive (which contained the oem Windows XP
Home) the slave. I also used the disk copy software that
came with the new drive. Now I can boot from either the
new drive or the old one, but the old drive is still the
C drive. How do I make the new drive the C drive so I can
erase (reformat) the old drive and use it to store data
files? I have already tried removing the old drive and
setting the new drive to "single", but Windows would not
boot. What am I doing wrong. (By the way I did not get a
Windows disk with my computer, but I did purchase a
retail version of Windows XP Home when I upgraded my
daughters computer and it has been activated.) Any help
would be greatly appreciated!
 
Harry said:
I recently added a new 160 GB Western Digital hard drive
to my system and made it the master. I made the original
80 GB WD hard drive (which contained the oem Windows XP
Home) the slave. I also used the disk copy software that
came with the new drive. Now I can boot from either the
new drive or the old one, but the old drive is still the
C drive. How do I make the new drive the C drive so I can
erase (reformat) the old drive and use it to store data
files? I have already tried removing the old drive and
setting the new drive to "single", but Windows would not
boot. What am I doing wrong. (By the way I did not get a
Windows disk with my computer, but I did purchase a
retail version of Windows XP Home when I upgraded my
daughters computer and it has been activated.) Any help
would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
-------------------------------------

After a copy of the 80 GB XP to the 160 GB XP, the registry of the 160 GB
XP points to many files on the 80 GB XP (the volume letter C do not change
in this registry). It is possible to boot to this 160 GB XP only if the 80
GB XP is present. It is not safe to operate a long time in this state
because this may damage both systems as some files are common.
To correct this:
Boot on the 160 GB XP
The letters of the 80 GB XP (C) and of the 160 GB XP (?) must be swapped
in the registry of the 160 GB XP in use.
For that use the Knowledge Base article Q223188
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q223188 ( regedit :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, right click on volume, choose
rename for instance C to Z, D to C, Z to D, reboot). Any other operation may
corrupt both systems.
Then the new system does not need the old system and is fully operational

Remark:
It is very useful to keep the old system (in case you damage the new one).
It is possible to modify the boot.ini to choose between the new or old
systems.
Some details to copy XP systems
http://perso.numericable.fr/gjullien/copy_xp.htm

Georges Jullien
 
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