changed drive letters--unable to boot windows

well, for starters.. smart windows xp decided to name my boot drive E: instead of C: when i did a fresh install of XP onto a new drive. i installed everything as normal and have been using it like that for two weeks. finally, i decided to try and switch my boot drive of E: to C: thru regedit. i sucessfully changed the reg key, rebooted and now the computer wont load. oh, i exported the original keys for a backup before i did any of this. i know changing the boot drive wont always work, as shown here, but is there any possible way to boot up my computer? i try loading it in safe mode and loading the last known good configuration, but it doesnt get any further than the blue 'welcome' login screen. it shows the xp logo and thats it, no 'welcome' and not even the list of usernames.

is there anything i can possibly do to get my system back up and running? thanks in advance.

as in repairing the installation? will i lose any settings or data?

would it be possible to load the registry settings i saved before i modified them? like in dos or something? i tried getting to the settings via the recovery console, but it kept giving me an 'access denied' message if i tried to browse outside of C:\WINDOWS

anyone?<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by vizonet on 09/17/04 11:15 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

Is your boot drive a SATA and the rest of the HDs IDE? Strange that it ended up being E:, figure that is the most likely way this could have happened.

I always unplug the IDE drives, and install Windows to make sure the SATA ends up being C:.

My Desktop: <A HREF="http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html" target="_new">http://Mr5oh.tripod.com/pc.html</A>