Trying something, Looked around, Can't find anything

Terry60 said:
If you have an XP installation CD, you should be able to do a "repair install" of your broken XP, and it will sort everything out without losing your apps and data (like an upgrade from XP to XP) (if it's primary)
Click to expand...

I'm gonna try this when the chkdsk is done running, Can't believe I didn't think of that... And if that doesn't work, I'll just slap on a new copy. Thanks guys. Will report back.
 
Ok, if its logical then, the only real option you have (if you don't have ANY primary partition on the HDD) is go with the "reinstall XP to the free space" like you were originally intending, though you probably should use your partition manager to create a pre-formatted NTFS partition first, and then set it to "active".
 
ok, i'm in GParted, I have 4 things I can see,

/dev/sda1 ntfs PQSERVICE 10.00GiB
unallocated unallocated 42.18GiB
/dev/sda2 extended 96.87GiB
>/dev/sda5 ntfs xp 96.87GiB boot

The first is my recovery drive for vista, which i'd prefer not to use if i can avoid it; and the last is the one that i want to boot from. I don't see anywhere to set it as active?

Thanks
Travis
 
Yeah, XP is definitely logical...
You can use your recovery partition, if you want to, for your boot files, and you can set it to "active". Otherwise, you will need to create an NTFS partition in the unformatted space, and set that one to active, and either use it for the boot partition, or install another XP into it.
 
Coolname007 said:
Yeah, XP is definitely logical...
You can use your recovery partition, if you want to, for your boot files, and you can set it to "active". Otherwise, you will need to create an NTFS partition in the unformatted space, and set that one to active, and either use it for the boot partition, or install another XP into it.
Click to expand...

set that one to active, as in; set it to boot?
 
Coolname007 said:
Yeh, that's what I meant...
Gparted calls it "boot", Disk Management calls it "active".
Its the same thing though.
Click to expand...

ok, i did that. if i use the windows xp disc to do a repair install, will that work using the newly created drive for the boot sector and then i can just size it down and hide it? or do i need to do a full new install of xp on to it?
 
Yeah, that should work too. If not, then just do a full install.
Personally, I'd be in favor of just copying the boot files (which are assumedly, still somewhere on your HDD...probably the XP partition) over to the active partition, and modifying boot.ini to say rdisk(0) and partition(2) in both lines, but that's just me..
Sizing the new partition down would leave you free space to add to your XP partition with Gparted. However, keep in mind you must first slide over the extended partition into the free space, so the free space follows the extended partition, and then slide over the logical XP partition (inside the extended) so the free space follows the XP partition. Then you will be able to resize the XP partition, to use up the free space.
 
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Coolname007 said:
Yeah, that should work too. If not, then just do a full install.
Personally, I'd be in favor of just copying the boot files (which are assumedly, still somewhere on your HDD...probably the XP partition) over to the active partition, and modifying boot.ini to say rdisk(0) and partition(2) in both lines, but that's just me..
Sizing the new partition down would leave you free space to add to your XP partition with Gparted. However, keep in mind you must first slide over the extended partition into the free space, so the free space follows the extended partition, and then slide over the logical XP partition (inside the extended) so the free space follows the XP partition. Then you will be able to resize the XP partition, to use up the free space.
Click to expand...

i'd do that, but i just know i'd manage to f* it up. i know how to do the moving of the space, so i think i'm gonna stick with that :smile:

ok, well i can't figure out how to do a repair install, unless i just install over the xp i already have installed?
 
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Well, sometimes there are multiple ways to solve the same problem.
No one's saying to "most definitely" use any particular solution. :smile: That is just what I would do, personally, if I found myself in the same fix.

And anyway, come to think of it, you would still need to write the bootsector code to the new partition (using "fixboot" from the Recovery Console on the XP CD) before my method would work. So probably best to do the repair install, as it all will happen pretty much instanteous. :wink:

Addendum:

Nariab said:
ok, well i can't figure out how to do a repair install, unless i just install over the xp i already have installed?
Click to expand...
Perform a Repair Installation
 
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well, i'm able to boot windows after doing a repair install, i'm now moving the free space to my XP partition. if i use gparted and hide the c: drive, will it still boot? i guess it really doesnt matter because i can unhide it if it doesn't. THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP GUYS, YOU HAVE MY ETERNAL GRATITUDE. I BOW TO YOU!

Thanks SO MUCH!
Travis
 
Which drive is C? If its the partition you just created, and is now your boot partition, you don't want to hide it, or your system can't boot...
And if its your XP partition, you can't hide that one either, because it wouldn't be able to find itself.

Why do you want to hide the partition?
 
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yeah my c: drive is a 108mb boot drive now. so i guess i won't hide it :smile: thanks Jake!

I want to hide it so that older install files won't even be tempted to install to it because they can't see it. Also I'd rather just not have it show up in "My Computer"
 
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You can try seeing if Disk Management will allow you to remove the drive letter from the partition, but I don't think its allowed in XP (though it is in W7).
Instead, you can remove it via the registry.

Type regedit.exe in Start->Run.
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>System>MountedDevices, find the key with the C drive letter in its name, right-click it, and select Remove. Make sure to back it up first (File->Export) though, in case it doesn't go so well...

Note: For any future readers which might read this thread, this should NOT be done if the OS itself is installed to the same partition. You should never try to remove or change the drive letter of the OS partition. Doing so will result in all sorts of problems, since your whole system will attempt to find various system files through the registry, and if the drive letter is missing, the system wont be able to find it. The ONLY reason why I suggested doing this is because his "system" partition (i.e. the partition that contains the boot files) is a separate partition than the OS partition, and so removing the drive letter shouldn't have any ill effects.
 
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