Solved System Drive correction

[Gudea]

Hi,
I have a problem with my hard drives. It started suddenly in the past week as I have been unable to load any new programs. I continually get a message that the Windows Installer service could not be accessed...something like that. Nothing worked in terms of fixing this.

I have two drives on the computer. Drive C is the system drive, and E is the backup. Just now I noticed that in "My Computer" Drive E is all of a sudden listed as the system drive and C just hangs around (I suppose) waiting to be 'cloned to' (which is the purpose of E in the first place).

Is there any way that I can change this back to the original arrangement. It's probably a fairly simple process, but I'm at a loss. And, I am thinking that the Installer problem is probably related to this sudden switch. I have no clue what I must have done to facilitate the change, but I'm not having any success finding a similar problem in the messages I'm reading.

 

[boohbah]

there may be some help here,

windows installer service could not be accessed

in one of the posts it mentions

check if Windows Installer Startup type is automatic and status is started

check this out first by typing services in the start menu search

 

[Ztruker]

Disconnect the E: drive and see if the system boots normally.

 

[Gudea]

To both replies...thanks for the suggestions but nothing has worked. Tried all of the possibilities, and the end result is now:

in the computer management screen...E is now listed as disk 0, while C is now 1. Both are now listed as active (don't know why), which caused me a couple of hours of an inoperative computer. The repeating message on the screen was BOOTMGR is missing, press ctrl-Alt-Del. That was tons of fun. After disconnecting both hard drives and having the Windows 7 Installation disk repair the boot manager, I am still unable to switch the primary drive from E to C, nor is the Windows Installer program working at all. This is very frustrating.

I have an idea that I wanted to pass by anyone...I have Norton Ghost on my computer. If I do a clone from E to C, and only check "set drive active (for booting OS)" (which refers to setting the destination, C, active" is it possible to correct the active drive problem without messing up the contents of the drives?....if that makes any sense.

Can you tell this is very frustrating?

Thanks for your help so far.

 

[Gudea]

Apparently, having the Windows 7 Installation disc repair the boot manager did solve the problem. Somehow the boot manager had become corrupted in the C hard drive, and then when I rebooted the computer, I was given the option of choosing one of the two drives, picked C and both problems were solved: I am able to install software now, and as long as I choose the correct option, then the C drive is the primary.