Hello. My PC runs XP Home SP3. I made the mistake some while ago of partitioning the main disk (C and F in Windows, C and E in DOS) leaving myself insufficient room on the C: part which contains the OS. I used Partition Magic to merge the two which was subsequently named F: (unfortunately),( E: in DOS, which still shows a partition). XP will no longer START properly, getting to the loading your preferences screen before immediately logging off and cycling through the two states every few seconds. It seems I may have two choices: There is a second HDD FITTED and I could probably copy from E: to the other drive and then remove the partition in DOS (the XP disc repair seems to allow me to do this), deleting the contents of E:. Alternatively, would renaming E: to C: solve anything, and how would I do this? Does the 'label' command enable me to do it or would the fact that the PC would think there were two C: drives cause a problem?

Any ADVICE greatly appreciated. Note to self: Leave disc drives alone!Biggest problem with C becoming F is that there are POINTERS that point to system files c:\windows\system32 etc.

I would start froma clean SLATE myself... Install new drive and clean OS to that, then pair up your troubled data drive as slave, and migrate your data to the clean built drive.