Changing The Value Of The %SystemRoot% Variable In Windows..

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\control\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!!!

"Temarias" <Temarias RemoveThis @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\control\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