Finding the boot.ini file in Windows XP

[Pacinamac23]

I recently cloned an old HDD to a new one with my boot partition. I managed to change the drive letter to the new cloned drive to C: and the old one to Z: (just to get it out of the way) but when I go to boot the new drive it says NTLDR is missing. On my old drive windows was on the extended partition: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

I need to change the boot.ini on my new drive to (1). I know how to edit my current (running) HDD because I can go into system startup and recovery, hit the edit button and go for it, but I cannot find the raw file on either one. Any help?

 

[tdgx]

Easiest way in WinXP is to go to Run, type cmd to get the command prompt, then run bootcfg.exe. Use the /? switch the first time you use bootcfg to give you the options to setup boot.ini.

 

[Twista]

open the c drive folder and..

1. Go to tools @ top
2. folder options
3.view
4.show hidden files
5. unchek "hide protected operating system files
6. look in c: and look for boot.ini
7.right click go to props.
8. uncheck Read only
9. Edit the file and save.

 

[Pacinamac23]

Ok I found my boot.ini on my old drive, it was in another partition (the primary one). I made a new boot.ini on my newly cloned drive,but it does not seem to read it at all. I put in some options and a longer delay but it shows none of the options.

The newly cloned drive is master on the primary IDE channel.

 

[xcript]

Or:

Start -> Run -> "notepad \boot.ini" [Enter]

Later.. :beer:

 

[Pacinamac23]

Ok, let me explain this more clearly. I can only get into windows on the drive that works, the old drive. The new drive, had the old drive cloned onto it using norton ghost. Thus, using the methods you have told me to edit the boot.ini would edit the one on the old drive, not the one I am trying to find.

Regardless, I found the boot.ini on the old one, it was on the primary partition, which did not have my OS, my extended logical had the OS.

 

[Pacinamac23]

Alright, I found out that my newly cloned drive did not have an NTLDR file because the old drive that I cloned it from, did not have the NTLDR file in the OS partition (logical drive), it was in the boot partiton (primary partition).

So when I boot off my new drive I now get my boot menu, when I click a choice, it just reboots the machine right off, with no message or anything. .

 

[Pacinamac23]

Ok i got to the boot menu and the initial load of XP on the new drive. I realized that it did not have an ntdetect.com file. Again, a file that was on my boot partition of my old drive, not on the OS partition of the drive.

Now when I get to the blue welcome screen, it basically stops loading. Any ideas?