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Quick Format Question

658 Views 10 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Fishie36, 
Fishie36
Quick question: I have windows installed on D but C is my primary partition (containing boot.ini etc...). If I format C will I still be able to boot to D? Will it preserve my boot.ini through the format? I will be using partition magic 8.
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L
In your bois set D as the start up. And turn off page fileing on C.
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Fishie36
Quote:


Originally Posted by Loki

In your bois set D as the start up. And turn off page fileing on C.

Whaaa? My bios only sees hard drives, not partitions, silly
. These are partitions on one drive.
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L
Quote:


Originally Posted by Fishie36

Whaaa? My bios only sees hard drives, not partitions, silly
. These are partitions on one drive.

Err opps need more coffee Just saw it's the same HD. Yes it should.

Go into msconfig to double check the boot ini.
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Fishie36
Quote:


Originally Posted by Loki

Err opps need more coffee Just saw it's the same HD. Yes it should.

Go into msconfig to double check the boot ini.

Yes I know my boot.ini is fine right now but will it be after the format? lol
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Z
Quote:


Originally Posted by Fishie36

Yes I know my boot.ini is fine right now but will it be after the format? lol

Most likely not.
If "Boot.ini" resides on drive C: and you format it then you'll lose the file.
"Boot.ini" is one of the very first files that come into play when Windows XP is started. It contains the location of Windows XP.
During the startup process, functions from the Windows XP file named "Ntldr" are in charge of getting the proper operating system loaded and "Ntldr" looks at "Boot.ini" to find out where the operating systems are located and whether a boot menu should be displayed or not.
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Fishie36
Quote:


Originally Posted by z_one

Most likely not.
If "Boot.ini" resides on drive C: and you format it then you'll lose the file.
"Boot.ini" is one of the very first files that come into play when Windows XP is started. It contains the location of Windows XP.
During the startup process, functions from the Windows XP file named "Ntldr" are in charge of getting the proper operating system loaded and "Ntldr" looks at "Boot.ini" to find out where the operating systems are located and whether a boot menu should be displayed or not.

Ok, so then I have to change D to the primary, then format C, then change C back to primary? The reason I'm doing this is because I plan on reinstalling windows soon and I want it to be on C when I do.
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CyberDruid
I can't see how you will be able to preserve the boot sector when you format C. I use Partition Commander (a subset of System Commander) and it has a "repair/restore master boot record" funstion--but I have not tried it with your problem.

EDIT: I would say you should try switching your main boot to D as you said earlier.
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Fishie36
Well... you know what sucks? My whole hard drive just got erased. While I was converting D to a primary somehting happened and then it said I had no partitioned hard drive space. So I popped in my windows cd and it say I had 111gb unallocated space.
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CyberDruid
Sound like time to reload....it happens.
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Fishie36
Quote:


Originally Posted by CyberDruid

Sound like time to reload....it happens.

Yeah I'm already back but it sucks because there was some stuff that I didn't have backed up and I just installed windows two days ago!
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