I had a “spare” boot folder (not operating system files) in my E Drive and, as you say, somehow my system was using that to start up in combination with the system files on the C drive.

I just can’t figure out how things got that way. I never put any system stuff on data disks. I never run “multiple system” setups. And I don’t think something like “format /S” even works nowadays.

I don’t copy, move, or delete system files. Windows is like a beautiful stack of crystal wine glasses. If it’s stable, you don’t mess with it. It’s why I wanted to set up a disk image in the first place. I’ve got something that works, and if my C drive blows up I’d like to recreate it the easy way.

So I can’t have my operating system spread over two physical drives.

My mistake was assuming this E folder was just a superfluous copy, and switching it off before trying a restart, but looking back on it there probably wasn’t any other way to force the system back to normal.

The Windows installation disk was able to “repair” this either by toggling the system over to use the C drive boot folder, or actually putting new boot files on the C drive so it worked. I don’t know, it didn’t tell me. But if I suspect if I hadn’t “broken” it, it wouldn’t have been able to fix it.

After that quick repair, I was able to clean the boot files from the E drive, and now all the working parts are under the hood and none in the trunk.

I use Windows because I run a lot of software that doesn’t run on anything else. Some programs won’t even run on Vista. But the rest of my family runs Macs. Only my daughter has a smartphone. My wife has an IPod that runs software she needs.

That’s why.

What, you want that in English?

“boot” from “bootstrap” as in raising one’s self by, means your PC boots through a bunch of phases. Just after the BIOS gets the hardware ducks marching in a row, it checks the hard drives for a boot sector (old Windows) or a “/boot” folder (Linux and now, apparently, Windows 7). That boot sector in turn loads the OS, wherever it is.

If you’ve ever set up a PC to boot from multiple operating systems, you messed around at this level. In that case the boot sector/folder knows how to branch to OSes stored on various hard drives depending on which one you pick.

Sounds like your boot folder was located on E and set to boot Windows from C.

Until you kicked your PC squarely in the middle of the boot process–about nut high, if you must–and took out the boot step. Nothing gonna work after that.

Windows, AFAIK, still doesn’t handle it well when you start copying parts of its core files around. Not surprised things went from bad to worse when you started trying to delete system files and reformatting the drive and renaming the boot folder. Don’t do that. With Windows you must simply throw your hands in the air and despair.

You restored from the Windows 7 DVD, if I understand right, and it worked with E: reformatted? Hmmm…I’ll guess that you now have a /boot folder on your C drive. Or maybe it did it with an old-school boot sector. Interesting.

Glad I’m still able to get by on Windows XP. I haven’t had to suffer through any of this stuff.

OTOH, my friendly Sikh delivery guy, who resembles Santa Claus in a blue turban, just brought me a tablet PC running Android (aka Linux). Pretty cool toy, and makes me wonder even more why I should waste money upgrading Windows. I like being off that grid.