New Cloned Boot Drive -Assigned New Drive Letter - Won't Boot

One option I see is to re-clone the orignial drive c to
the new boot drive e. This should get me back to square
one again, minus the changes I made to the new boot
drive. I will save this as a last resort.

I searched for my most recent modified files on drive e.
I immediately rebooted after re-assigning my drive C to
E. The most recent modified files I found are:

e:\windows\ntbtlog.txt modified 7:19 PM
e:\windows\debug\passwd.log modified 7:19 PM
e:\windows\system32\config\security.log modified 7:19 PM
E:\WINDOWS\BOOTSTAT.DAT modified 7:19 PM
e:\windows\debug\oakley.log modified 7:16 PM

There are a bunch of files in the
e:\windows\system32\config directory that were modified
at 7:12 PM.

I was thinking about copying these files from c drive to
the e drive and then trying to reboot from the e drive.
I would try this but am afraid of doing anything without
some guidance for fear of digging myself into a bigger
hole.

I've re-cloned the new boot drive. If someone can tell
me how to successfully change this drive from E to C, I
would appreciate it.

Bob Rodak wrote:

> I am working on a friends computer.

<snip>

> I would also like to know how to properly
> change the boot drive from drive E to drive C. Any help
> would be appreciated.

Generally speaking the procedure is to remove the old drive from the
machine before booting up with the new drive as master. That way
Windows will reassign the C: drive to the drive it booted from.

--
Himanshu (Please remove XXX from my email address to reply by email)

Bob Rodak wrote:

> I am working on a friends computer. I installed a new
> ATA133 hard drive on an appropriate controller card. I
> cloned the orignial drive and then set the boot drive in
> the BIOS to SCSCI. The computer seemed to boot to the
> new drive because it now showed the tree on the E drive
> upon initialization of Explorer. I wanted to make the
> new drive letter drive C. I moved the page and print
> spool files from drive C to Drive E. I proceded to
> reassign the drive C to drive Z and rebooted, hoping that
> drive C would now be available and I could reassign new
> drive E to drive C. Now the computer comes up to the
> Windows boot screen and then just sits there (in normal
> and safe modes). It never gets to the log on screen. I
> need to know how to get the new Z drive reassigned back
> to drive C. I would also like to know how to properly
> change the boot drive from drive E to drive C. Any help
> would be appreciated.

A proper cloned drive needs the following:

1) all data and %windir% copied (naturally)
2) ntdetect.com, ntldr, and boot.ini copied to the root of the partition
3) boot sector code and Master Boot Record copied to first sector
4) BIOS boot pointing to new disk
5) drive jumper set correctly (usually "cable select" does the job)

A lot of people fail to make proper settings when cloning partitions and
end up without 2) or 3) and if you don't change 4) then you are actually
booting from the old disk.

Check all these items, but I expect that you were still using the boot
loader from the old disk.

--
Kent W. England, Microsoft MVP for Windows Security