Gahh, drive letter issue.

K.C. Leblanc

K.C. Leblanc

K.C. Leblanc

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Ok, desided to wipe Linux and go back to XP (I got bored of having to edit obscure config files every time something wouldn't work).

Since my partitioning was all over the place and I needed to move some files I started by installing XP on my spare drive.

Once I'll coppied all the files I needed off my main drive to the spare I then installed XP on the main drive.

I forgot that if windws detects another installation it does very strange things with drive letters. Anyway at the moment my main disk is D: and my spare disk is C:.

Anyway I can sort this? I've tried disk manager but it doesn't let you change the drive letters on boot disks.
 
Windows doesn't like it if you try change the system drive letter, I tried it once by editing the registry.

It didn't work!
 
I've just done it and it seems to be working, I think I've got awat with it, due to it being a fresh install with almost nothing installed. However since both my partitions have XP installs on the real test will be when I delete the windows files from my spare hard drive.
 
whitecrook said:
why does it matter what drive your system is on? Answer - it doesn't.
Click to expand...

I've had this setup before and some software just didn't work properly. I'm also conserned that my D drive installation might in some way be dependent on my C drive installation.

Oh Turbotronic, it sort of work, bt not very well, I've now got all sort of stuff not working. Time for rebuild number 3 (expect to see a thread asking for imaging software recommendations soon:D).
 
I have been in a similar situation and needed my XP installation to appear as though it was on the C drive and not the D as it was reporting to be, IIRC.

What I did was to delete the following, and as I needed the XP install on another drive I then ghosted it after I deleted the registry entries, and then rebooted the system...

driverecognitionxpnd7.jpg


Ensuring that the drive was the first drive to boot from in the BIOS that had the XP on that I wished to boot to XP booted fine (assigning itself as the C drive when previously it had been D) and then 'found' all the drives again and assigned them drive letters, which I then changed as required to ensure that games / apps installed on other drives / partitions were correct.

I'm not sure if the above can help you but it saved me having to reinstall the OS.
 
Again I'm going back quite a while here but IIRC on another machine with similar problems I deleted the above and then shutdown the machine removing the leads to each of the drives apart from the one that had XP on. Rebooted and XP assigned itself again as 'C.' Swiched off and attached the other drives and all was well.
 
bound to cause problems in the long run, easier to format instead of botching it..

there are many places in the registry that store the drive letter, and 3rd party tools with their ini or reg files
 
In a last ditch attempt I disconected the spare hard drive, and deleting those reg entries. At that point I discovered that my boot files were actualy on the spare drive. Tryed using FIXMBR to add a boot secotr to the main drive and it wasn't having it. So I've reinstalled, and I can't activate, I think because I used the same copy of windows in a VM a few days back.

EDIT: Now activated, had to phone up.
 
Last edited:
hmm I've done this multiple times over many years. Never had a problem.

You could always create a hard link to the winnt directory (or windows directory)
 
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