my problem on XP: my boot drive and my system drive are seperate...reversible?!

[joeconway]

Hi, this is my first post in this forum so excuse me if I'm coming across as a dim.


after almost losing a lot of data I decided to sort out my mess of a system.

Long story short: I have 3 hard drives. C:\ D:\ and G:\

D:\ has been wiped clean and used to backup internally. So thats fine.

The problem comes from the fact that I boot into XP off of G:\. which is fine except for the fact that I can't format my C:\ drive (Which has a corrupted Vista install on it) because my XP install (On my G drive) is using it as a system drive

is there any way to reverse this cross-operating system dependancy so that I can wipe the C:\ drive and end this nightmare!?


i have googled it and not come across anything, I'm starting to think that the only way around this is to completely reinstall XP altogether, which I would rather avoid!


any advice or useful links greatly appreciated

 

[eXor]

Unplug the power connectors for D:\ and G:\, format C:\, reconnect.

Or make a boot CD and format it from DOS / Linux.

 

[.walls]

system disk = disk you boot from
boot disk = disk the system is on

MS = daft.

Remove C:\ temporarily, boot from XP cd into recovery console, log into the XP install and type:

fixmbr
fixboot
bootcfg /rebuild

Reboot into xp as the boot and system disk.

(as usual, having a recent backup is advised)