How to DELETE MOUNTED DEVICES AFTER COPYING XP PARTITION w Regedit

This may be helpful to many since it only took me 4 days of solid reading.

Copying or cloning XP to a new bigger partition with other partitions can make it go insane cause registry info on partitions is totally
different. Result, it thinks you're doing something illegal and LOCKS YOU OUT. Big pain to fix that- change machine number. Also
connecting new cloned drive to active XP is bad (or having other drives connected on first boot) cause it assigns new letter (H) that is
then retained and programs all look for C.

But you can clear out all the disk and volume records easily from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices by deleting
ALL the values except default line on the right side box of the Windows Registry Editor- XP will just generate new clean sequential
letters when it reboots. All instructions say do that just before you clone it, but you only have to do it before you first boot up the clone in Windows,
and it is a simple matter to edit it offline after cloning with the same Regedit on the master machine.

Changes occur instantly on registry edits- no save is required. Be very careful with any saved Reg files, clicking on any .reg file
LOADS it into registry, replacing or merging it with what's there. They are executable. It won't hurt to export MountedDevices key (49k)
to a file- if anything is screwed up (some program that needed something), you can restore it, but this is pretty foolproof

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With cloned drive attached by USB or some other way, open START/RUN  type REGEDIT. Study that Mounted Devices key and the
info on it on your C drive. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices - just keep expanding folders on the left pane. I had alot of junk there from multiple disk resizes and changes and it's fine to get rid of that (Later).

Highlight  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE - click on it (without this, next step isn't possible)

File/LOAD HIVE  (location window opens)

This is the trick- the Registry is all over the place- Wikipedia says it is in DOC+SETTNGS/USERNAME/ntuser.dat, but that file is only
12megs- the complete registry if you back it up with export (good idea) and save it somewhere external is 159megs (on mine). The
correct file/hive to load is at
(EXTERNAL DRIVE LETTER of cloned C) H:/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM    make sure you go to your external drive and don't mess with anything else- its easy to break your system completely with Registry changes. "H" is an example from mine- whatever your new C drive letter is called now

When it asks for a name, that's not real- YOU name it with anything: "CRAP", so you can identify the external machine portion among your master operating drive's registry

Go to  MountedDevices (SYSTEM has 7-8 subkeys,MD is one)

Delete all values in right box except first Default line (some say delete entire key, but others say DON"T- it might be inadvisable)

File/UNLOAD HIVE  (important)

EXIT or close

I would get out fast- there is supposed to be some autorepair function that might replace everything if you stick around too long. 

Voila. Install new drive, disconnect any others initially and boot up into clean new drive assignments with oodles of space, the last
frontier. Now give me back those 4 days.
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Mako   www.hammernews.com