What if I....?

[nightflier2k]

What if I took out my "C" drive with win 98 installed
Left in my "D" drive with win 2000 installed
And replaced the "C" drive with a brand new HD
and rebooted
Will I still have the choice to go to win2000 and will it "see" the new HD (Now C)
Or will it fail cause it cant see anything on my "c" drive?

thanks in advance!

 

[sohcrates]

the bootloader files are on C: so if you take it out, and replace it with a blank disk, you'll never boot into win2k. you should back up boot.ini (and there may be some others, i can't remember, maybe someone else knows?) off the C: root drive onto a floppy, then take out the disk..put the new one one, and then put the files off the floppy back on to the new disk...you should be good to go then (at least you can get into win2k).

 

[nightflier2k]

Yeah, I figured It would not be as easy as a swap..but i never did it so you never know.

 

[sohcrates]

well. don't give up hope. it IS relatively easy, all you have to do is back up a couple files to floppy disk and go to town with it. if you need the names of the files OTHER than boot.ini (that i THINK you might need), let me know...i can find them out within a few hours (i'm not at my actual computer now to take a look for myself..but i'll be home after midnight EST.)

 

[nightflier2k]

Yeah that would be great if ya could do that...No hurry. I'll check back tomorrow..im on the west coast US.
Have a good one
later

 

[sohcrates]

here's what you need:

boot.ini
ntldr
bootsect.dos
ntdetect.com

put these 4 on a floppy, and then you can switch out hard drives, replace with a new one, put these files BACK on , and you're golden.

 

[sohcrates]

btw....they're all in the root of C:

 

[nightflier2k]

Thanks bud ill give it a try
cheers!

 

[Ryan]

Ok, my problem is kinda similar. I have two HD's. "C:" has my old windows 95, and "d:" has Windows 2000. I want to get rid of c drive all together, but I can't because D: doesn't have the boot.ini, ntldr, bootsect.dos, ntdetect.com files. could I just copy them to "d:", remove "c:" and boot it like normal?

 

[sohcrates]

I've never tried that, but my instincts would tell me that there's a good chance of that idea working. it's easy to test though: just copy the files over....unplug the c: drive temporarily, and see if it boots. it's worth a shot.

 

[Ryan]

alrighty, i'll try