Change Drive Letters

[bjadams44]

Somehow when installing Windows XP Pro I made a small screwup and now my "E" drive is my main windows drive instead of "C". I know I can change drive letters but I don't recall how and I wondered if I'm likely to screw things up if I do?

[PCBruiser]

If it boots as the E drive, then you have installed the OS as the E drive and there is no way to change that except a reinstall of Windows. The problem is once the OS has assigned the OS drive letter, that's permanent without a reinstall as all OS references within the registry are to the assigned drive. No practical way to fix all those registry keys other than a reinstall.

Your mistake? You had other drives connected during the initial install, and if these drives take precedence in the bios, then they will be assigned "earlier" drive letters. You should only have your intended boot drive connected (or powered up) during an OS install, or else this is what may happen. You can connect the other drives up after the initial install.

Edit: Because this is really an XP install issue, I am moving this to the Windows XP Forum, and leaving a redirect in the Drives Forum.

[surfandcross]

bjadams44,

you can try this if you will like to

http://www.petri.co.il/change_system...windows_xp.htm

good luck....

[PCBruiser]

Originally Posted by surfandcross

bjadams44,

you can try this if you will like to

http://www.petri.co.il/change_system...windows_xp.htm

good luck....

The probability of this "trick" working is close to zero. Sounds good, and simple, but in practice, it can't change the thousands and thousands of registry entries that find all of your system components and software. If you want to try this, make absolutely sure you have a full system backup using somnething like Acronis TrueImage, and be prepared to do a full clean reinstall of Windows, since it is very likely that it will completely hose your system setup.

[surfandcross]

Originally Posted by PCBruiser

The probability of this "trick" working is close to zero. Sounds good, and simple, but in practice, it can't change the thousands and thousands of registry entries that find all of your system components and software. If you want to try this, make absolutely sure you have a full system backup using somnething like Acronis TrueImage, and be prepared to do a full clean reinstall of Windows, since it is very likely that it will completely hose your system setup.

that is about 100 % true....... if you ask me i would just start all over and do it the right way, but if he does feel like and he is tooo lazy to start all over then do it. after all, i dont have the problem , he is. I just gave the tip

[bjadams44]

Originally Posted by PCBruiser

Your mistake? You had other drives connected during the initial install.

Actually it was just a single drive but I was using it in another computer while I assembled parts for a new build. It had a large unpartitioned space and a formatted space where I had backup files.

Is there any problem having my OS on "E" other than it being different. I can do a full re-install if using the "E" drive is going to cause me headaches down the road.

Thanks for the replies.

[PCBruiser]

Having the OS on E shouldn't be a real problem, other than the fact that some software installers are badly done and not exactly smart enough to look for the OS on a drive other than C. They assume (and you know what that means) that the OS is always on C, which is not really always the case.

Having multi-partitioned drives is exactly the same from the OS installer's point of view as having multiple drives. So the first partition would have be seen by the installer as C, the optical as D and the unpartitioned space made E when it was partitioned. What I would personally do is get all the data off of the drive (attach it to another system temporarily or some such) and then redo the OS install. While Windows shouldn't care about it in the future, you might have some other software getting annoyed from time to time. As long as you can get the data off the drive, I would fix the problem earlier than later. If you can't get the data off, then I guess the answer is to just live with it and deal with any problems that might (or might not) come up later.

[bjadams44]

Thanks. I've already found some Epox programs that want, come hell or high water, to install on C. I'm thinking I'll probably do a reinstall before I get too far with this one.

Epox 9NPA+ Ultra
AMD 64 3500+ Venice
MSI X800 256 mb video
2x512 OCZ platinum Rev. 2
Thermaltake 480w PS
Hitachi 160 Gig Sata HDD
Windows XP Pro

[shaihulud]

From a previous post of mine:

Actually, this has to do with drive letters that have been assigned to active partitions on the drives. You do not have to disconnect or disable any drive. You only need to create a partition on the drive that which has none, and reboot the installation process. The drive letter allocation will go in a particular order, which can be based on BIOS's boot order. (e.g.) Through the BIOS you would choose either the PATA or the SATA to be C:\ by the selection of the boot order if both contained an active partition.

"...Scan all fixed hard disks as they are enumerated, assign drive letters starting with any active primary partitions (if there is one), otherwise, scan the first primary partition on each drive. Assign next available letter starting with C:..."

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;234048

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;896536


Dont forget if you change the boot order due to partitions changes, you may need to change the ARC path.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...090c84f.xml.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...b;en-us;q102873

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q155222/