Invalid boot.ini Booting from Drive C:/...

I recently had to replace a failed hard drive. I don't know how but the drive was labled as h:. How can I change the h back to c:? I don't have a drive c. I do have an external drive that has a backup of drive c: but retrospect will not load it. Would Acronis fix my problem? As you can see, I'm lost. The computer now gives the title message and then boots.

 

Did you do a fresh install of Windows on the new HD? Which version did you use? Was the new HD a second HD on your system?

If you installed XP on the new HD and you had primary partitions on an existing first HD (or the external if it was plugged in when you did the install, I think) then Windows picks a higher drive letter such as your H: for the new install.

Acronis can change the drive letter H: to C: but then the OS won't boot because it can't find the proper files.

Can you explain your setup a little more. How many HD(s) any other operating systems?

 

i guess some sort of storage drive was lost, yes? if so, then acronis(i guess disk director) can help you, you easily can change drive letters. But wrote more detailed description of your problem.

 

I am on a Dell 8400 with the windows xp pro sp2 and all known updates from microsoft. The new drive is a seagate 160gb. It replaced the original drive that suffered a quick death. I used the windows disk that came with the computer to format the hard drive. I cannot remember if the external drive was connected or not. I believe that it was. I do not have a boot.ini file on the h: drive and cannot create one. I am afraid to completely reformat the drive as I already lost a lot of files and mostly pictures when the last drive failed. I do not trust the retrospect backup.

 

I guess first, I would say, if your Operating System is on drive H: then the only way to change the drive letter to C: is by reinstalling. The good news is that there is no problem with XP running on an H: drive. I'm confused as to why the message would state "Booting from C:\" when you say there is no C:.
Try Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management(over in left pane). It should give you a graph of how your HD is laid out. Is Disk 0 one long dark blue bar labeled H:?

Also let me see your boot.ini:

 

In Computer Management my Drive 0 is H: and is listed as the primary partition. It has one long blue line. Drive 3 is W: with Drives 1 & 2 as D: and E: removable media. Drive W: is a western digital 200gb external drive.

When I try to click on settings under Start and Recovery I get the following System Control Panel Applet: "The C:\boot.ini file can not be opened. Operating System and Timeout settings can not be changed.

 

I'm sorry, I've been thinking about this for a couple of hours and am just not sure of what is going on. Your last post about the error message regarding editing boot.ini is throwing me. I just don't have an answer.

You could look at Microsoft's directions for rebuilding boot.ini http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330184 which would normally work fine if you have an XP disk. You could at least do the bootcfg /list to see if it can find your boot.ini file. The question is why is Windows looking for a C:\boot.ini if your starting from H: with a fresh install?

One other thing you could check is Start>Run>[type in box] msconfig>Under boot.ini tab see what is in the window. Is there more than one entry under [Operating Systems]? I don't think there is or you would be getting a choice at bootup. Is there anything at all in the window? Not sure how useful this will be because I'm unsure if you can edit this boot.ini. It may or may not be a hidden file on your H: drive.

Just a few ideas. Maybe someone else has seen something similar.