Change XP Driveletter 2

[djtech2k]

Does anyone know of any process or utility that will allow me to change the driveletter of an XP Pro install? Since the drive is the OS drive, Windows will not allow me to. I accidentally installed XP fresh today but did not notice that it gave the slave drive the C: driveletter. I have removed the C: from the slave drive, but the boot os drive is still showing as F:.

-DJ

 

[rodentcentre]

You can use disk management...NOTE: I have not tried this on the boot drive before so I am unsure if it will corrupt anything:

Right-click on your my computer icon
Pull down to Manage
Select Disk Management from the left side
Find your F:\ drive on the right side
Right-click it and choose Change Drive Letters and Paths
Change the drive letter to C:\

 

[djtech2k]

Thats exactly what I tried. Windows will not allow it since its the os bott drive.

-DJ

 

[torandson]

Is there some reason that you can't just redo the fresh install without the slave drive in the system?
--torandson

 

[torandson]

I think changing the driveletter of the OS drive is a lot more complex than anything that is even reasonably possible, which is why I implied in my previous post that a reinstall is the only realistic option. But as a matter of courtesy I think I should also tell you why I believe this.
If the OS is located on the F drive, then it is necessarily the case that your registry is chock full of file paths rooted on drive F. If you were to change the drive letter of your system drive without changing all of these references, the OS would not be able to find many of the files necessary for its operation and would become completely nonfunctional. Going into the registry to change all of these references to drive F is not something you'd likely want to, or even possibly be able to do. Attempting to do so would create the strong likelihood of a confused and crippled system.

Were one determined to accomplish this at any cost and to do so while the OS was running, it would be necessary to simultaneously and instantaneously change the drive letter of the system drive, and every one of those file paths that are stored in the registry ON THAT SAME DRIVE, since the first item to change would instantly be in conflict with all the other references that had not yet changed. At some point, the system would not know where to find the next item in the registry that needed to be changed, because it would no longer know where to find the registry. In short, it is simply not possible to do this from within the OS. Doing all of this with an offline DOS-based utility(if one even exists, which I strongly doubt) or from an OS on another drive would not be worth the trouble and highly unlikely to lead to a stable system. I would strongly discourage you from trying to change the drive letter of the system drive. Another fresh install of the OS is the only realistic way for you to change the system drive letter IMHO.
--torandson


--torandson

 

[torandson]

And I didn't even mention that the boot process has to know where to find the OS, and would be unaffected by anything you did to the F drive.
--torandson
P.S. A fresh install that put the OS on drive F while the C drive was a slave??? Are you sure the drive cables and jumpers are set the way you think they are? It sounds very odd to me that the system would assign the letter C to a slave drive.

 

[bcastner]

"This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in Windows. For the most part, this is not recommended."

Meaning - to not do so. Torandson's advice above is completely on point, and star'ed by me. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=249321

For the masochist who will have to reinstall:

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/Q223/1/88.ASP&NoWebContent=1

The important question is why F: is the first available active volume seen by the XP install process.

Fix that issue before attemption a reinstallation. This might include unplugging any USB pen drives, and disconnecting any removable drives such as IOMEGA ZIP drives on your system. Literaly unplug them from your system prior to a reinstall attempt.

 

[Dollar]

I had exactly this happen to me where the OS installed on to drive D: I'm not entirely sure how it came about, but during the text based install, it called my slave the c: and XP just assigned the next available drive letter (in my case it was D) to the "new partition" I had created. I still reckon it was because of the jumper settings on my drives. Cable select may have been the culprit, and they're all master/slave only now
As the information above shows, you could disabled all devices that could be assigned a letter to be sure you get c: and I would recommend the re-install of XP rather than going through all that hassled with drive letter changing on the boot partition. You never know what kind of problems you could be creating by that change.
Fortunately, XP is very good for a re-install process. Be glad it's not Win98 or NT.

 

[djtech2k]

I figured I would have to reinstall, but figured it was worth asking if anyone else had found a tool to do it. This happened because the slave drive did previously have the installed OS on it and was the master when the system kept crashing. Unsure if it was a disk problem or install problem, I recovered the necessary data and just hooked it up as a slave to be used for storage in case the drive will still work. I think thats how it happened and I didnt notice.

-DJ

 

[torandson]

If you suspect drive problems with your slave drive it would be advisable to check it thoroughly with a disk utility before using it even for backed-up data. Corrupted partitions on slave drives can lead to ntfs.sys errors or who knows what, OS confusion, and possibly another round of OS reinstall frustration down the road.
--torandson
Thank you bcastner. I don't know much about XP just yet, but I have learned that poking around in the registry without a map and a flashlight is not recommended.