XP will not boot after moving partition

Except for the IBM Aptiva (W95) which my dad gave me when he'd upgraded, (and that came with a Full MS Windows installation disc as well as the Aptiva factory reset Disc), I've only ever built systems myself and bought a copy of Windows for each, so I've never had a recovery partition.
From my experience here, it's unusual to get a recovery partition and bootable media with an OEM PC. Normally the recovery partition has a "create your own portable recovery" facility in case the HDD suffers complete meltdown including the recovery partition, not just an OS failure.
That means that if the recovery partition is still intact, you can normally boot into it (and effect a subsequent recovery or full reset) directly by use of the correct hot key(s) as the PC is powered up.
What the correct key(s) is depends on the PC make. Generally something in the F10 F11 Alt+F10 range or even holding down "0" as the power key is pressed. You'll have to refer to the OEM website and give it a try to see if it's still functional.
 
On her System the recovery key was F10 or F11, can't remember now but when I pressed it it asked for recovery media. I think I remembered when messing with the HP tools I had a reminder to create boot media via their creation tool so I am thinking the recovery partition worked in conjunction with a boot disk.

I am like you, and haven't messed much with recovery partitions. I only build new machines for myself to suit my needs and never messed with boot partition except on other friends machines. My first one was the only one I bought and was an IBM Small Business Machine for around $300. All others I have built.

Restored one friend's pc once that had a recovery disk and a partition both and remember punting the disk in and it ran the recovery tool or system and restored it to factory shipped status. It was just a CD disk but it was on a XP Home system so the whole OS should have fit on the disk without any service packs but they may have purchased after sp1. I am thinking it used some files off the partition as well. But then it had its own driver disk. I think the partition had drivers in it and don't remember having to load the driver disk.

All in all she has the machine back and I think she will mostly be using Windows 7 anyway. I just don't like defeat and feel defeated in what I set out to do. I got her to upgrade her 1GB RAM to 4GB which is all it supports so she should be good for a couple years.
 
Thanks for the help and giving me some ideas. It really helped speed the things along an point me in new directions. I may even, if I get brain damage and start feeling crazy, go over and image the systems wipe the drive and try and restore Vista. Just to say I did it and to learn a little something.

Addendum

As a side note. it looks like you fly planes. Do you also use flight sims? I have FSX and picked up saitek cyborg 3D usb Gold stick used and havn't even installed FSX and found out if the stick works yet. Just to busy and had them both a couple months.
 
I think there's a copy of MS FS98 gathering dust somewhere that used to run on W95, and I ran the earliest version on an IBM portable I borrowed for the weekend back in 1985 (portable !! It was the size of an ATX tower and twice the weight) which ran under DOS (probably DOS1 or 2 back then) on a green monochrome 5" screen.
Neither was a particularly realistic experience, though cutting edge at the time.
The only games on my PC since W95 (and Douglas Adams' wonderful "Starship Titanic") are a couple of freeware Solitaire downloads and a Sudoku.
My best friend from Grammar School over 50 years ago, has a younger brother (though not young, being a bus-pass holder too), who has a custom rig specifically for FS, complete with triple monitors, power feedback control column and rudder, etc.
I've never seen it, just been told about it.
My own PPL, whilst technically still valid, is so time-lapsed that I'd need a full resit of all the Aviation Law, Meteorology, etc. qualifications as well as getting re-certified to fly P1. Like riding a bike though, which I still do regularly, I don't think the basic skills are ever lost.
 
Well, my first intro to MS Flight was on my friend Mike's (who was in computer science classes) pc somewhere between 1989 - 1991, so it had to be pre Win 95. It looked like it was a little past the doss years.
I found it really intriguing and actually got obsessed with it this last year after doing some research. I new improvements were made but found out that just before MS released FSX around 2009 and sold the license rights to the Pro version to Lockhead-Martin, they released an SDK. Other enthusiasts started writing modules for not only airports around the world and new aircraft but there was one that would even log into the National Weather Service or NOAA and get real time weather data and the module would allow yo to fly into an airport while simulating actual weather conditions real time. Lockhead-Martin wen on to develop the code they acquired for dev of a flight sim to train pilots on new aircraft. They then started offering their version to the public to download and purchase a license which is the only real 'In-development' version being actively developed even though the FSX consumer version still has a huge following since you can still buy it for around $25 us. Despite FSX huge following some say that is in dire straights and usage is diminishing. Seams to me that X Plan 10 is the more advanced 3d flight sim being around 55.7GB and FSX only 8.4GB.
You mentioned triple monitors but there are guys you can find on Youtube with 6 and 8 monitor FSX systems alone with the hardware modules you can get. Some even have rigged their own sims with metal frames and I read of one guy (apparently a computer and electric engineer) went to an aircraft graveyard and pulled out some instrumentation and modded it to work with his computer and sim. Another guy was developing a hydrolic platform, though not as elaborate as Lockhead-Martin.
The interesting thing to me is how realistic it has gotten and you can fly anything from a MD-80 to a 777, 747, U-2, Space shuttle and other fighter aircraft except some of the ones the US military are currently have in use and classified.
This all sparked interest in that my friend Mike ahd worked for Rockwell Automation for about 20 years and had a good background for computer automated controls. I would have to get some small investments to do something of that magnitude and find a market other than the County Fair Ride or Carnival market and have a marketing plan. I don't know how many small flight training airports would even be interested and may end up being an expensive hobby.
 
I didn't see Dan Goodell explain anywhere in his site on how to figure out where a partition was before cloning or how to put one back in an exact location you want. This all reminds me of my 2007 system build that started bluescreening last year after the wires on the SATA connectors started breaking. Somehow I think it screwed something up in how xp sees the partition even after connecting it to a usb cable. It looks like it tries and wants to load but then just goes to a blue screen. I don't think I will ever correct that machine.
 
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