Boot drive letter has changed

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G

Guest

I shut down my pc as normal, the following day it would not boot up, it
appears the C: drive has changed to the E: drive so my boot.ini doesn't
recognise where the operating system is.
I can rebuild the boot.ini but this will then boot from E: drive, I presume
my programs will not work as they are linked to C: drive.

Should I do this, could I reorganise the drive letters once I was up and
running again or is it not that simple?

Also any idea why this would have happened, before shutdown I had updated
windows (from latest windows updates) & also Nortons av, nothing I haven't
done in the past.

Windows prof SP2
Many thanks
MK
 
MK,
Did you make any drive letter changes??(Just a thought)

Anyways yes you can rebuild the boot.ini to point to that drive boot up and
change the drive letters back again. But after that dont forget to update the
boot.ini again also.

Tip: The first time you update it make sure you REM the existing entry. This
way all you will need to do after you have booted up is to remove the new
entry added to the boot.ini and remove the REM from the old one!!

Hope this helps,
yogi
 
K said:
I shut down my pc as normal, the following day it would not boot up, it
appears the C: drive has changed to the E: drive so my boot.ini doesn't
recognise where the operating system is.
I can rebuild the boot.ini but this will then boot from E: drive, I presume
my programs will not work as they are linked to C: drive.

Should I do this, could I reorganise the drive letters once I was up and
running again or is it not that simple?

Also any idea why this would have happened, before shutdown I had updated
windows (from latest windows updates) & also Nortons av, nothing I haven't
done in the past.

Windows prof SP2
Many thanks
MK
Click to expand...

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us
 
Rock said:
How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us
Click to expand...

Like Rock says -- you definitely want to change the drive
back to C again since all of the links on the drive still point
to C -- if you were to change the boot.ini to point to E,
when it came up (if it did), all the links would be busted
(this includes registry settings) that point to C.

The link Rock points to should work, the other way to
do it involves rewriting the MBR so the signature of
the drive changes and booting with only that drive in
the system so when windows finds it, it assigns it the
letter C. (an easy way to get this screwed up is to
restore from an image of the C drive to a drive in the
system then reboot with both drives still there -- XP
will then assign a letter other than what you want to
the restored drive and the fun begins ...

mikey
 
Many thanks to everyone's advice.
MK

Mike Fields said:
Like Rock says -- you definitely want to change the drive
back to C again since all of the links on the drive still point
to C -- if you were to change the boot.ini to point to E,
when it came up (if it did), all the links would be busted
(this includes registry settings) that point to C.

The link Rock points to should work, the other way to
do it involves rewriting the MBR so the signature of
the drive changes and booting with only that drive in
the system so when windows finds it, it assigns it the
letter C. (an easy way to get this screwed up is to
restore from an image of the C drive to a drive in the
system then reboot with both drives still there -- XP
will then assign a letter other than what you want to
the restored drive and the fun begins ...

mikey
Click to expand...
 
Thanks again to everyone's reply, just to feedback on the results.
I had to go into the bios to set the dvd drive as the boot drive to run the
xp cd, so I applied this to the c: drive.
The bios settings had changed so my master drive was no longer the 1st boot
drive option, I changed this and it booted okay with everything in tact.
All seems fine at the moment.
Thanks
 
Inline

K said:
Thanks again to everyone's reply, just to feedback on the results.
I had to go into the bios to set the dvd drive as the boot drive to run
the
xp cd, so I applied this to the c: drive.
Click to expand...

Applied what to the C: drive?
The Bios doesn't label any drives as C.
If the dvd drive is the first boot device, then you should list your hard
drive as the second, third, or fourth boot device.
 
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