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June 27th, 2006 13:00

DIMENSION 2300 Booting from E Drive?

​ I've worked on a lot of computers and seen the depths of user's thoughtlessness...the most memorable reached recently with one that had 927 spywares, malwares, keyloggers etc and 16 viruses....not to mention the 600 registry problems....the computer was used for a few years and then abandoned because it was slow! I almost got it back to normal before giving up and reinstalling XP. ​
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​ But I digress. My immediate problem is one I haven't had before. The computer is a Dimension 2300 with a 1.8ghz cpu, a 30gig maxtor hdd, and windows XP pro. The machine, although a few years old, must have been used less than a month...the activation hadn't been done...I did it with no problem. The Maxtor is cabled as primary and jumpered for cable select...It tests out fine...as does the memory. ​
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​ But the previous owner partitioned it into C: and E:.....ok, except the boot flag is on E:. The bulk of the folders are in E and only about 5 mb in 3 folders are in C....including a very few dlls and other stuff that looks unessential. The computer runs a little flakey, but runs....for example, the desktop won't display the background image I want, is stuck at 16 bit color, and wanders between grays. ​
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​ My inclination is to get all the folders now in E over into C, but that solution seems too simple and I don't have any idea what the consequences might be. My other thought is to simply give C the boot flag and leave all else alone. Your help and thoughts appreciated.... ​
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​ Paul ​

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20.1K Posts

June 27th, 2006 13:00

XP can boot from any drive. It doesn't have to be C. You have to reformat and reinstall XP to change the boot drive.

1.3K Posts

June 27th, 2006 20:00

When you re-install XP, be sure you delete the partition you no longer want or XP will have you select which partition you want to install XP on. Be sure to copy any data files from the "E:\" drive before attempting to re-install XP.

6 Posts

July 6th, 2006 11:00

Hi...thanks for your thoughts...It occurred to me a day or so later that there was a very simple solution to getting everything into a true, bootable, C drive. I used my cloning program, Casper XP, and cloned the E drive into a different hard drive, making just one partition. Of course, the new drive came up as C. I then cloned that drive back to the original drive and then that was C too.  Voila.
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