how to change drive letter assignment

[Peter]

I did a clean install of Win2k SP4 on a new blank hard
disk configured as master on the primary IDE channel. I
also have an old FAT32 disk as the slave drive on the same
ATA100 cable. It contains backup files I planned to
transfer to the new drive after the OS is installed.
There are also a CD ROM drive and a DVD burner as master
and slave on the secondary IDE channel. Prior to the
upgrade, the CD ROM and the DVD burner were drives E: and
F:.

After Win2k successfully and smoothly installed, I found
the primary SLAVE to be assigned C:, the two optical
drives became D: and :, and the boot drive is F:!

I disconnected the slave FAT32 disk (now C, rebooted but
found the NTFS boot drive to be still F:. The optical
drives are still D: and E:, and drive C: is missing!

What happened and how can I reassign C: to the bootdrive?

 

[Dave Patrick]

You'll probably need to reinstall without the slave connected. To do a clean
install, either boot the Windows 2000 install CD-Rom or setup disks. The set
of four install disks can be created from your Windows 2000 CD-Rom; change
to the \bootdisk directory on the CD-Rom and execute makeboot.exe (from dos)
or makebt32.exe (from 32 bit) and follow the prompts.

When you get to the point, delete the existing NTFS and or other partitions
found. After you delete the partition(s) abort the install, then again
restart the pc booting the CD-Rom or setup disks to avoid unexpected drive
letter assignments with your new install.

You can reassign non-system non-boot partition drive letters in Disk
Management
Start|Run|diskmgmt.msc

This article may also help.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;234048

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
|I did a clean install of Win2k SP4 on a new blank hard
| disk configured as master on the primary IDE channel. I
| also have an old FAT32 disk as the slave drive on the same
| ATA100 cable. It contains backup files I planned to
| transfer to the new drive after the OS is installed.
| There are also a CD ROM drive and a DVD burner as master
| and slave on the secondary IDE channel. Prior to the
| upgrade, the CD ROM and the DVD burner were drives E: and
| F:.
|
| After Win2k successfully and smoothly installed, I found
| the primary SLAVE to be assigned C:, the two optical
| drives became D: and :, and the boot drive is F:!
|
| I disconnected the slave FAT32 disk (now C, rebooted but
| found the NTFS boot drive to be still F:. The optical
| drives are still D: and E:, and drive C: is missing!
|
| What happened and how can I reassign C: to the bootdrive?

 

[Peter]

Thanks for the reply.

When I did the clean install on an unpartitioned new hard
disk, I made the mistake of keeping the old hard disk in
the IDE0 Slave position, and when Win2k partitioned and
formatted the blank drive, even though it was in the IDE0
Master position, it was assigned F:. Since it contains
the system and boot partition, I couldn't change its drive
letter assignment, no matter which cable and which
position I connected it to.

After fooling with Disk Management for a while, I came to
the same conclusion as you, and repeated the clean install
with only the new drive in place. This time, after
repartitioning and formatting, it was correctly assigned
to C:. Pretty drastic way to change a drive letter!