After install boot drive letter comes up F:

[Tim T]

I just reinstalled Windows XP which I have to do periodically when it gets
real sloooow. I am unable to get my boot drive letter to C:. After
reinstalling and booting it came up F: and my slave drive came up some other
letter which I forget. The problem is Computer Manager/Disk Management won't
allow me to change my boot drive. My boot drive, slave, cd and dvd have
always been C,D,E,F respectively. How can I change the boot drive letterback
to C? And if I have to do a reinstall how do I insure it won't do the same
again? I haven't insalled any software to F yet in case I do have to
reinstall. All help appreciated.

 

[philo]

I just reinstalled Windows XP which I have to do periodically when it gets
real sloooow. I am unable to get my boot drive letter to C:. After
reinstalling and booting it came up F: and my slave drive came up some
other
letter which I forget. The problem is Computer Manager/Disk Management
won't
allow me to change my boot drive. My boot drive, slave, cd and dvd have
always been C,D,E,F respectively. How can I change the boot drive
letterback
to C? And if I have to do a reinstall how do I insure it won't do the same
again? I haven't insalled any software to F yet in case I do have to
reinstall. All help appreciated.

That's correct, you cannot change the drive letter of your boot drive.

Though it won't hurt anything to have your machine setup that way,
the only way to correct it would be to reinstall XP

but you will need to make sure your HD is on the first IDE (or SATA)
channel,
you must have switched something around

 

[John John (MVP)]

Did you delete and recreate the partition during the installation? If
yes then after you recreated the partition you should have rebooted
before installing on the newly recreated partition.

John

 

[philo]

Did you delete and recreate the partition during the installation? If yes
then after you recreated the partition you should have rebooted before
installing on the newly recreated partition.

John

Not likely
I always delete then re-create &
have never had the wrong drive letter assigned.

It looks like the drive is on the wrong channel
such as secondary slave...to have been assigned the F: designation

 

[John John (MVP)]

Not likely
I always delete then re-create &
have never had the wrong drive letter assigned.

It looks like the drive is on the wrong channel
such as secondary slave...to have been assigned the F: designation

That is possible but being that the OP stated that he has successfully
reinstalled correctly many times in the past I would say that it is
unlikely that the Master/Slave relationship and position of the disks
would have changed since the last installation, unless the OP went
inside the case and changed things around. As for the deleted/recreated
partition and drive letter assignment during installation this is
something that is known to happen at times, it happens more often on
multi partition disks. It doesn't always happen but it is not all that
unusual. The problem could also be a result of changes the boot order
in the BIOS, which may change the way the devices are presented to
NTDETECT.COM which in turn may affect the drive letter assignments.

John

 

[John John (MVP)]

Not likely
I always delete then re-create &
have never had the wrong drive letter assigned.

Setup Changes Drive Letters After a Partition Is Deleted and Reinstalled
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/225025

John

 

[philo]

That is possible but being that the OP stated that he has successfully
reinstalled correctly many times in the past I would say that it is
unlikely that the Master/Slave relationship and position of the disks
would have changed since the last installation, unless the OP went inside
the case and changed things around. As for the deleted/recreated
partition and drive letter assignment during installation this is
something that is known to happen at times, it happens more often on multi
partition disks. It doesn't always happen but it is not all that unusual.
The problem could also be a result of changes the boot order in the BIOS,
which may change the way the devices are presented to NTDETECT.COM which
in turn may affect the drive letter assignments.

John

Yep, very possibly a boot-order change in the BIOS

 

[Tim T]

Yes I did repartition the drive. What I will do now is disconnect the other
drives and reinstall to insure that it does not happen again. Thanks

 

[Tim T]

Correct! I did change the boot order to run a program that puts all zeros on
the drive during formatting from my floppy and I my cd the 2nd device to
install Windows. I guess I should have changed the back. Didn't think it made
a difference. Thanks

 

[John John (MVP)]

You're welcome.

John

Correct! I did change the boot order to run a program that puts all zeros on
the drive during formatting from my floppy and I my cd the 2nd device to
install Windows. I guess I should have changed the back. Didn't think it made
a difference. Thanks

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