Dual Boot Drive Letter Assignment

BillHicksRIP · 1 Feb 2008 at 11:03

Due to a bt of a disaster yesterday I've had to rebuild my XP and W2K3 Server dual-booted rig. I installed XP on it's own partition first, then installed W2K3 on the other partition. I'm working on the W2K3 image at the moment and have noticed it's installed Windows into the H: drive. The XP image is showing as holding the C: drive. Can I just change the letter assignment within Disk Management or will that screw things up? What a nightmare this has been!

rpstewart · 1 Feb 2008 at 11:10

Disk Management won't let you change the drive letters in this situation because 2K3 is booting from the C: drive but with the \windows path on the H: drive.

There are nasty workarounds etc for a single boot environment but I'm not sure what the appropriate fix is for dual boot.

BillHicksRIP · 1 Feb 2008 at 11:14

Aw crud. I'm not sure where I've gone wrong here. I've had a dual-boot of Xp first followed by W2K3 working fine for months, but on the rebuild it all goes west. So if I attempt to re-install W2K3 is there any way to ensure it installs to C: ?

marc2003 · 1 Feb 2008 at 11:15

my little tip for dual boot setups..... always run the setup for the 2nd OS from within the windows desktop of the first. then the letters always end up right.

bit late for you now though.