How do I edit the device path for WinXP using bcdedit?

[gforce23]

Long story short, Win7 RTM completely messed up the existing XP installation on a Pentium3 test machine.

Anyhow, I want to change the device path for XP Pro from F: to D: and am a little confused here. What command's the right one for me?

bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=D:
OR
bcdedit /set {ntldr} osdevice partition=D:

 

[sup3rsprt]

device

if you change it, you need to make sure ntldr is on the D: drive along with ntdetect.com and boot.ini

 

[Perrybucsdad]

You know what is really amazing? I remember someone saying that this feeds into Google if tagged properly, well the OP was 28 minutes ago, and this post is top of the list on Google if you type "edit device path winxp" in Google! That's amazing!!

Sorry, for hijacking the thread, just wanted to comment about this great feature.

 

[sup3rsprt]

Yeah I noticed that before too. Google indexes pages of this site really fast.

 

[gforce23]

device

if you change it, you need to make sure ntldr is on the D: drive along with ntdetect.com and boot.ini

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried that but it didn't work. Selecting XP from the boot loader menu results in a blank screen and I had to do a hard reboot to get things moving again.
ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini are present on the D: (XP) drive. Here's my boot.ini file on the D: partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The partitions on the HDD are arranged in the following order:
Partition F: - boot partition, primary - FAT32
Partition C: - Win7 partition, primary - NTFS
Partition D: - WinXP, extended - NTFS

 

[sup3rsprt]

Try putting ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini on C: partition and point device there instead.

Your D: partition is not a primary one so maybe that's why it won't boot from it.

 

[gforce23]

Try putting ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini on C: partition and point device there instead.

Your D: partition is not a primary one so maybe that's why it won't boot from it.

Wouldn't that overwrite the files with the same name that were created by Windows 7? Win7 is installed on C: and it would be a humongous mess to lose both OSes. Just a tad scared about explaining to the owners of this machine that their baby would need a complete reinstall.

 

[sup3rsprt]

Windows 7 does not use ntldr, ntdetect.com, or boot.ini to boot. Therefore overwriting them does not hurt anything. I personally have everything necessary to boot all OS on my C: drive.

 

[Perrybucsdad]

Windows 7 does not use ntldr, ntdetect.com, or boot.ini to boot. Therefore overwriting them does not hurt anything. I personally have everything necessary to boot all OS on my C: drive.

I wonder.... if you put everything necessary to boot on a removable drive, if that could be a nice security feature? I have to give that a try. It would be a great way to stup a dummy trying to use my computer.

 

[sup3rsprt]

I never thought of it that way It could probably be made to work as long as your removable drive can be selected as a boot device within the BIOS.

 

[gforce23]

Windows 7 does not use ntldr, ntdetect.com, or boot.ini to boot. Therefore overwriting them does not hurt anything. I personally have everything necessary to boot all OS on my C: drive.

No go. I'm still presented with the blank screen of death.

Funny thing is, I was able to get to the XP advanced options menu (F8) and tried to sneak my way in via the safe mode. However, the loading process got stuck after loading classpnp.sys.

I even tried booting up from the XP CD. However, before I could get to the recovery console, I was presented with an error message along the lines of "cannot process File:\i386\ntkrnlmp.exe. Press any key to exit". A cursory search on Microsoft's web site didn't throw up anything that I haven't tested.

 

[sup3rsprt]

it sounds like your XP install is hosed and this is not really related to the location of the boot files. If you can get to the F8 menu for XP it means that boot files are working, just the OS isn't.