How can I reassign the Primary Partition?

[Sumanji]

Hey,

I just reformatted my dad's laptop, but now the C:\ is show as logical drive, and the D:\ (with backups, pictures etc.) is showing as the system primary partition. Windows boots fine, but I'm just a bit annoyed by this to be honest is there any way to reassign C:\ as the primary partition? I can't find a way of doing this from disk management.

If I boot with a Vista/XP disc and then delete the D:\ partition, will it automatically reassign C:\ as primary? Or will that just nuke the whole disk structure and destroy my freshly formatted machine, haha?



Cheers,

Su

[Jonessie]

There are a number of ways in which you can resolve this, backing all files and folders on your dads computer at this point though is a priority and make sure everything that is needed to be save is safe and you know there will be not loss of data once this is all backed up.

Most importantly first of all make sure everything is backed up and safe in the event of you losing the partion for any reason. Backup everything required to be backed up now before goling any further.

OK if everyhting is now backed up then there are a number of ways in which this can be done but sometimes it means there is a 89% probability there will be loss of data which is the reason why I kept saying "make sure everything is backed up."

The easiest way in which this can be resolve is making a bootable MS-DOS CD which which will will need to do because it's a laptop. Once you have done this boot the laptop with the CD and then once loaded you are in MS-DOS mode.

http://old.bink.nu/xpbootcd/ this will show you how to make a bootable CD

Within DOS only
Type in the following command.

FDISK [Press Enter]

Follow through the menu and then remove the "A" from HDD2 and make the HDD1 the active partion again and then boot the laptop as normal and now the active primary HDD should now be the HDD1.

If all fails then I'm afraid it's a reinstallation. But again I cannot stress enough make sure everything required is backup before you attempt anything. if you lose data because you did not backup fits then it's down to you.

[Sumanji]

I ended up nuking the partition by accident, and had to start from scratch again....

Oops

I did manage to get the docs off the "dead" C:\ by hooking it up to my main PC though!

Su