Hi, Illegal.
I divide my hard disk to system and data partitions.
YOU may think of them as "system" and "data" partitions. But Windows sees
them only as Primary or Extended partitions. Each time you boot, the BIOS
detects your HD and reads the partition table on it. That table is just 64
bytes long and has room for only 16 bytes of data for each partition. It
knows the starting and ending locations, whether the partition is Primary or
Extended, and which Primary partition is the Active (bootable) partition.
There's no room here for other data, such as the volume label.
WinXP does have a "System Partition", but it probably doesn't mean what you
expect. WinXP typically has only 3 "system files": NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and
Boot.ini. These go into the Root of the System Partition, which is the
first Active partition on the first (or only) HD, typically C:\. All the
rest of WinXP (the "boot files") are in the "boot folder" (named \Windows,
by default), and whichever volume (primary partition or logical drive) you
select during Setup becomes the "boot volume", and Setup puts all the
gigabyte or so of files there. Often, C: is both the System Partition and
the Boot Volume, and all of WinXP is in C:\Windows.
An Extended partition can contain one or more logical drives and any logical
drive or any Primary partition may become the Boot Volume. But a logical
drive cannot be marked Active (bootable). Usually the FIRST Primary
partition is marked Active and becomes the System Partition. But any one
Primary partition may be Active at any one time, and whichever is Active
when Setup is run becomes the WinXP System Partition.
If you have multiple hard disks, the process gets more complex. Many users
have tried to install WinXP onto their big new HD, installed as Primary
Master, while their old HD is plugged in as a secondary or slave drive. In
this case, WinXP Setup finds the Active partition on the old HD, assigns it
drive letter C:, and assigns some other letter (G:?) to the first partition
on their new HD. The user usually wanted the first partition on the new HD
to become C: and there's no good way to fix this except to run Setup all
over again, making sure that the second HD is not connected or enabled until
after WinXP is installed on the new HD.
In your case, you may somehow have designated your second primary partition
as the Active partition. In WinXP, run Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to
check which partition is Active. Right-click your first primary partition
and click Mark Partition as Active. Then do an "in-place upgrade" or a
"repair reinstall", and is described in this KB article:
How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q315341
Post back if you have questions.
RC
