Vista Boot Issues After Partition

[SpikedCola]

Long story short, Im set up as follows:

Partition 1 - was 60gb, now 30gb - XP

Partition 2 - was 10gb, now 40gb - Vista

Partition 3, 4, 5 - Extended partitions for extra stuf

Vista wouldnt shrink partition 2 for me, so I booted XP, and used PartitionMagic to resize. All went without a hitch, so I tried to load Vista (Im using EasyBCD for a bootloader, I didnt like Vista's) and it said it was missing a file. Popped in the Vista DVD and repaired like the error screen told me to, and now it boots Vista. Here's the real problem:

After the loading screen, and the logon screen (I have it set to autologon to my account), it sits at 'Personalizing Your Desktop...' for about 5 minutes, then goes to a blank desktop screen (no taskbar, and the old windows 2k background - the blue one). If I CTRL+ALT+DEL, I can start explorer.exe (as its not running at boot) and it will load a 'temporary account' (theres a little balloon tip that says so).

How do I get it to boot the proper profile, without having to reformat the partition and redo Vista?

[wfunction]

Oooh, I think I know! Check out your system drive letter (taskmgr, run, notepad, Open, etc.). Is it the same? Probably not. In that case, google “change system drive letter” (no quotes) to find the solution.

[SpikedCola]

I cant believe I didnt think of that. You're 100% right. Opened notepad, and it shows the system drive as F: when it should obviously be C:. I searched what you told me to, but I havent found anything relevant to whats happening, only a lot of stuff about XP or about changing another drive's letter. Care to explain a bit further?

Hmm. Tried PartitionMagic in XP compatibility mode, and Acronis Disk Director, and neither would work (PartitionMagic said a file was missing when I rebooted, Acronis wouldnt even reboot the computer to complete the drive letter change). What other (hopefully freeware) tool can I use?

FIXED IT!!!

Here's the solution, for anyone else that has this problem:

- When windows starts to hang on Personalizing, press CTRL ALT DEL

- Go to New Task, type regedit and hit enter

- Navigate to HKLM/System/MountedDevices

- Find the key that has your drive letter, for example, mine was \DosDevices\F: and rename it to what it should be, in my case, \DosDevices\C:

Reboot and youre done!

Edited February 27, 2007 by SpikedCola