I had a "spare" boot folder (not operating system files) in my E Drive and, as you say, somehow my system was using that to start up in combination with the system files on the C drive.

I just can't figure out how things got that way. I never put any system stuff on data disks. I never run "multiple system" setups. And I don't think something like "format /S" even works nowadays.

I don't copy, move, or delete system files. Windows is like a beautiful stack of crystal wine glasses. If it's stable, you don't mess with it. It's why I wanted to set up a disk image in the first place. I've got something that works, and if my C drive blows up I'd like to recreate it the easy way.

So I can't have my operating system spread over two physical drives.

My mistake was assuming this E folder was just a superfluous copy, and switching it off before trying a restart, but looking back on it there probably wasn't any other way to force the system back to normal.

The Windows installation disk was able to "repair" this either by toggling the system over to use the C drive boot folder, or actually putting new boot files on the C drive so it worked. I don't know, it didn't tell me. But if I suspect if I hadn't "broken" it, it wouldn't have been able to fix it.

After that quick repair, I was able to clean the boot files from the E drive, and now all the working parts are under the hood and none in the trunk.

I use Windows because I run a lot of software that doesn't run on anything else. Some programs won't even run on Vista. But the rest of my family runs Macs. Only my daughter has a smartphone. My wife has an IPod that runs software she needs.