"Temarias" <Temarias@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C456C517-7E08-40B8-9067-95FAD16B08BC@microsoft.com...
> Hi. I have a Windows XP machine that was upgraded from Windows 2000. When
> the machine was Win2K, %systemroot% was equal to C:\winnt. When I upgraded
> to
> Windows XP, the %systemroot% value remained the same. Is there any way I
> can
> change the value of the %systemroot% to C:\windows without having to do a
> clean install.
>
> My first attempt to change the %systemroot% value...
> I placed a harddrive I wanted to change from C:\winnt to C:\windows into
> another machine as a secondary drive. I was able to change the winnt
> folder
> to windows and the boot.ini to look for Windows XP on C:\windows. However,
> when I put the drive back in its original chassis as the master drive and
> booted up, I saw the Windows XP logo and the ctrl-alt-del screen, the
> system
> allowed and accepted me to enter my username and password. The machine
> warned
> me that my password was able to expire and then quickly logged me off. I
> never saw the desktop.
>
> Is there a place in the registry were I can change the value of
> %systemroot%. I loked in
> HKey_local_machine\system\currentcontrolset\contro l\session
> manager\environment, but I do not see a key I can change specifically for
> %systemroot%. I do not have a recovery disk for the machine. Thanks for
> any
> help you can provided!!!

Sounds like your upgrade went wrong, or that WinXP is still in
the folder c:\WinNT. The registry value is probably
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SystemRoot