Registry Backup Question

[SammyBoy]

hey guys, i just had a bad problem with my win2k install, where it restarted every time i booted up. I reformatted but it changed my drive letters, will this cause a problem if I have an old backup that uses the old names?

 

[jaywallen]

Help us out here by telling us exactly what you mean when you say that you "reformatted but it changed my drive letters". When you restore the old Windows 2000 backup to a partition on the system, it's going to want to call the first physical partition on the system Drive C:. As long as your restore the backup to a partition which has the same drive letter relationship to that primary active partition as your previous install, you will be okay. In other words, if the %SYSTEMROOT% directory was on drive C:, and it's going to be on drive C: again, no problem. If it was on drive D:, and it's going to be on drive D: again, no problem. It doesn't matter how subsequent partitions (or physical drives) get shuffled around in the drive letter dance, nor does it matter how previous ones get shuffled around as long as the MBR can direct the system to the loader and the loader can find the W2K system files. That's all that matters with respect to getting W2K to boot up. The next concern is to consider where your applications are installed. If you installed applications to a different partition than your system partition, then you have to maintain the drive letter relationship that existed between the partition(s) on which the apps were installed and the system partition, too. If your restored system won't meet these criteria, you're better off installing the OS and software fresh and then restoring only your data to wherever you want it on the system.

Does that help any?

Regards,
Jim