Merge operation made drive unbootable

After using Disk Director 10 to merge my drive C: (windows xp partition) with a large empty partition, all the data from my old C: drive, including the OS, has been placed in a folder on the new, single partition. Obviously I cannot now boot my machine. At the time, I thought it was odd that Director prompted me for a folder name for the data from the "old" partition.

Any ideas on how I can shift the data in the folder back to the root of the new C: drive? I realise it was probably my mistake, but I must say I got a bit confused by the user interface. I was just expecting Director to merge the two partitions transparently, but I guess not

 

Actually, I have just had a thought: perhaps the easiest solution might be to boot from a windows 98 startup disk and copy a boot.ini file which has been edited to point to the Windows folder location in the new folder created by DD 10 during the merge operation?

Would that work?

 

Hello Anthony PDC,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Management Software

Please note that to save your system working you should merge D: partition into C: partition.

We can not guarantee that it will work but in present situation the most probably useful workaround is:
- Open the folder where now your system files are.
- Cut them out of it and paste it in the root directory of your present active partition.
- Then edit boot.ini file properly and put it in the root directory of the same active partition.

Thank you
--
Alexander Gladkov