System files in wrong partition

[ulerei]

Hi I reinstalled XP a few days ago, all was well except XP wouldn't boot unless the cd was in the drive; "Boot from CD: Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter." I changed the primary boot devices and so on, still wanted the disc. When I got into windows I saw that files like boot.ini, IO.sys (the system files in my computer) were all on the hd I had for storage. I installed XP on D:\, storage hd was on C:\. Does it by default send some files to C or something? That's the only odd thing I have found, I'd like to get past it without having to reinstall, any help would be appreciated

 

[Nothinman]

It puts the boot files on the first active partition on the primary disk because that's a requirement for booting a lot of BIOSes. Make sure your data partition is set active.

 

[ulerei]

Thanks for replying, I set the other hd as the primary hd and it booted no problems. So the boot files must be on the first active partition, is there any way to move them to the same one as windows or are they stuck there?

 

[hopejr]

They are stuck there. Just ignore them. Windows won't let you move them anyway.

 

[MSCoder610]

Why not have the C drive for windows and then the D drive for storage? That's what I do.

 

[Nothinman]

Why not have the C drive for windows and then the D drive for storage? That's what I do.

Because it doesn't matter either way? And it's a little added security, most Windows cracks assume Windows is on C: and break if the directory is renamed (yay for XP for not letting you install to anything other than \windows) or the drive letter is wrong. It won't stop everything obviously, but every little bit helps.