Moving Boot partition to new install?

M

Mxcrules

n00b
Joined
Jul 26, 2004
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I can't seem to find an easy way to do this. Maybe I need some third party software like Vistabootpro? I had my C: (a single drive) running. So installed 2 new drives in a RAID and installed Vista 64 from scratch. So now I have 2 Vista installs to choose from and I used MSConfig to set the new RAID to the "default OS" so it would time out and boot up.

Well, I want to get rid of my old C: and of course the new Vista install won't boot without it. The whole time I had set the RAID C: to boot first in the BIOS it was actually trying, failing then moving on to the old C: drive.

What the heck do I have to do to ween the new install off the old one? I tried booting to the CD and "repairing the computer" with startup repair. It said nothing was wrong. Used to be you could just move the boot.ini files, etc. Anyone? Thanks!
 
You are making this way too complicated.

you should of unplugged the C drive and install on the 2 new drives from scratch, they will be the C drive. after it is up and running, power down, plug in the old drive, make sure you boot from the new install then transfer what you want off the old drive then reformat it.
 
No I think Windows is making this too complicated. If I load an OS from scratch on a new hard drive (or drives) I should be able to boot from it regardless of whether I had another drive with another OS installed at the time.

I've been up and running for a month now, I don't feel like reinstalling from scratch and setting it all up again.
 
True, but sometimes doing an new install of a second OS with the first still there the boot sector on the hard drive gets confused causing the problem you are having. I have had this problem before and there is ways to correct it but be careful because it is easy to screw up the index on the hard drive.

I learned my lesson and now do new installs with the original hard drive completely disconnected to prevent confusion between the two. There probably is a easier way but this works for me.
 
Ok, I appreciate the help but what I'm looking for is someone who knows how to transfer the BCD (boot configuration data) in Vista which apparently is a bit harder than it was in XP when it was called something else.
 
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