Windows Drive Letters Problem

mr.sly

mr.sly

mr.sly

Soldato
Joined
25 Jul 2006
Posts
3,877
Hi guys.

This problem has been annoying me all day, and I can't seem to find a solution for it.

I have one drive with two paritions (Windows + Backup), I reinstalled Windows today and for some reason it has made Backup the C:\ drive and Windows is now on D:\

I've tried to follow the Microsoft information here but after restarting the computer won't boot past the Welcome screen.

I have also tried following the same guide and just changing Media (D:\) to Z:\. It now shows up in Windows as Z:\ but when I go to re-install to get Windows back onto C:\, the Backup partition is showing up as C:\ again.

Formatting the whole drive isn't really an option because I don't have any other hard drives to backup my files.

Any ideas for this at all?
 
Now you can't get into windows i'm unsure, but as far as i was aware you can just right click my computer, click manage and then use disk management do whatever you want from there on.
 
You can't use disk management to change the drive letter for the system partition.

My initial thought is that the partition you've chosen isn't the first on the disk and it's actually booting off the media partition but Windows is on the other partition. However the fact that you can change the drive letter of the media partition suggests that this isn't the case.

Make sure "show hidden files" is on and check the root of each partition, which one has the NTLDR & boot.ini files (assuming we're talking XP here).
 
Cheers for the reply guys.

There was a boot file on C:\ (the media drive) earlier on, but I got rid of that and it the Windows drive was still D:\ when I booted off the XP CD.

Just checked to see if I could see NTLDR and boot.ini on the D:\ I can't see the files, and search isn't finding them either. Can I create a boot.ini file myself?
 
Slyvester said:
Just checked to see if I could see NTLDR and boot.ini on the D:\ I can't see the files, and search isn't finding them either. Can I create a boot.ini file myself?
Click to expand...
If you're running XP there will be a boot.ini and ntldr files in the root of one of the partitions, you'll need to ensure that you have "show hidden files" turned on and possibly "hide protected OS files" off in the folder options.

You need to check the root of both c: and d:
 
rpstewart said:
If you're running XP there will be a boot.ini and ntldr files in the root of one of the partitions, you'll need to ensure that you have "show hidden files" turned on and possibly "hide protected OS files" off in the folder options.

You need to check the root of both c: and d:
Click to expand...

Legend.

It was the "hide protected OS files" that was doing it. Never had to use that before.

Should I just move the NTLDR and boot.ini files across onto the D:\ or should I delete them and let Windows re-create them?
 
No worries LeperousDust. The problem got fixed and you learned something new!

Just sit in the corner like a naughty boy from now on though, OK! :p
 
Slyvester said:
Should I just move the NTLDR and boot.ini files across onto the D:\ or should I delete them and let Windows re-create them?
Click to expand...
No, they have to stay where they are. Move or delete them and the system won't boot.

Windows will only boot off the first partition of a disk so if you choose to install to a second partition the installer will put the boot files on one partition and the rest of the OS on the other one. The only options in this situation are either to leave things as they are or shuffle the data on the drive somehow to allow you to install Windows on the first partition. It might be simpler to just install XP on the media partition without formatting it then format the second partition in Windows and move the media onto it.
 
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