Boot.ini on my primary partition [c drive] [partitions]
Q: Today I need to get my edit boot.ini file to work around a conflict between SP2 and DivX. Anyway, I searched the entire C drive (where Windows is installed) in the boot.ini, but could not find him. I show hidden files and folders, and protected system files and the file was not there. Then I went to a different partition, the one I use for music and videos, etc. to store, and there was the boot.ini! Two partitions on the same physical drive, but I do not know why the Windows boot.ini file would have. Apparently everything is fine with this configuration. When I right click on My Computer-u0026amp; gt; Properties u0026amp; gt; Advanced u0026amp; gt; Start up and recovery settings u0026amp, gt, edit and edit the Boot.ini file, changes are reflected In that file on the secondary partition. Is this an OK setup? Has anyone experienced this? The only relevant piece of information I can think of is that my drive partitioned with Partition Magic 8. Would have moved boot.ini? Thanks in advance for help.
Re:The only way to 'fix' it would be to make sure the partition you're going to put Windows on is active and reinstall Windows.
Re:Don't mess with it.
The active (system) partition is what the BIOS loads to kickstart the OS. NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.INI must be on that partition. The boot.ini can point to your other partition(s) no problem.
It's not broken. I promise.
Re:Yeah, I'm booting fine, and the partition with boot.ini is marked active. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone.
Re:Your partition with boot.ini is marked active. Unusual, but not really a problem at all.
You're still booting right? 
Re:Thanks so much for the in-depth response. I'm not sure if I'm going to try fixing it right now, maybe this is just an issue I should just live with since it doesn't seem to be affecting anything. Then again, it just feels good to have everything neat and organized, and I don't like the boot and system partitions being on different drives. I don't have software to make an image of my drives right now, so I'd have to get that first. Once I do though, I think I will try what you've suggested.
Re:There might be an easy way to fix this. But, i don't know it. Since no one has suggested it, I am going to offer a way that I can think of.
Get a utility like Drive Image or Ghost that can make an image of a partition if you do not have one already.
Backup your data (music, video, pictures, Word documents, PDF files, ………)
Create an image of your drive C (the one with XP on it).
Copy all the system files from your drive D to your drive C. Those include boot.ini, ntldr, ……..
Run partition magic from the rescue floppy.
Is partition C a primary partition?
If not, forget about this suggestion.
If C is a primary partition, from Partition Magic make partition C active (I suspect that D is active on your system and you need to make C active).
Now, reboot.
Hopefully, XP will load. Check disk management and see if C is both system and boot. if it is, you are done.
If something does not work, you can always run Partition Magic and make D active again and run Drive Image and retore C and you will be back to your current system.
If the problem is the MBR, you can fix it as explained on this link.
http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm
Edit:
If this fails to make C your system partition, you can always install XP again.
This time, make sure that partition C is a primary partition and is active before you start. Put the XP CD in the drive and make the PC boot from the CD drive. Do the formating from the XP CD and do the install.
This is a description of system and boot partitions.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314470
Re:OK, looking at disk management, I see that C is my boot partition and E is my system partition. C is where I have Windows installed, and E is where I keep videos and music. E is where I the boot.ini file is located, there is no boot.ini on the C drive where Windows is. How can I get boot.ini on the C drive so that my OS can be complete on one partition? I suppose it got split up this way since I recently formatted the C drive two weeks ago, but not the E drive. Thanks.
Re:Go into disk management (XP) and see which partition is your boot partition and which one is your system partition.
This is not necessarily a problem as long as you do not want to change anything and keep using your system this way.
But, if you want to create an image of your OS partition with something like Drive image or Ghost, you would want it to be an independant and complete image that you could restore anywhere and boot. In this case, such an image will not be complete.
Re:But is this actually a "problem," do I need to do something to change it, or is it fine?
Re:If the second partition was created first or the first partition was formated then windows will see the second partition as being the oldest and place system files there for some reason. The Date and Time a partition was created seems to be important to windows and certain hard drive tools.
I ran into this trouble before.
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Tags: c drive, partitions