Boot drive mounts at F: after KB811408 repair ?

[Alan Barclay]

Hello:-

My computer was a victim of the problem described in
the KnowledgeBase article number in the title.
For the gory details, see my post to this group at
Nov 23, 2003 @ 5:25 PM

I attached a new hard drive in place of the original,
did a operating system restore with the Compaq CDROM,
then attached the original hard drive as secondary
master. In this configuration, I performed the registry
hack described in the KB article, by loading the key
at 'test'.

After the registry hack, I was able to boot from the
original hard drive, mounted at F: by using a boot.ini
file that named both the restored OS on C:, and the
original OS on F:.

On removing the new hard drive, and restoring the system
to its original config, Windows then thought it was
no longer activated, and I had to do a repair installation
from the CDROM, and reactivate.

Now the system boots OK, but mounts the (single) drive
at F:, and the registry contains a mix of references to
C: and F:

I have tried to remove the drive letter assignment with
diskpart from within Windows, but it won't let me change
the system drive.

I have tried to remove the drive letter assignment with
diskpart from the recovery console, but I receive a msg
saying that the remove failed.

Is there any way I can remove the drive letter assignment
and have the drive mount normally at C: ?

Any help most appreciated.

Regards,
Alan Barclay aabarclay <at> aol <dot> com

 

[Alan Barclay]

For the curious, a Google search found a reference to
KB 223188
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-
US;Q223188
on Doug Knox's excellent MVP site.

Basically, it involves renaming the DosDevices C: key
to something else, and renaming the one where the drive
(incorrectly) is mounted to C:

This article applies to Win2K, not XP, and after applying
it, Windows thought it was no longer activated, so I had
to do a repair install (again).

However, mirabile dictu, I did _not_ have to reactivate,
and the
C:\Windows\System32\wpa.d..
file was restored to one from Nov 24th.

Apparently Windows squirrels this away
somewhere (maybe it moved a copy of the wpa.bak file)

Anyway, now all happily mounted at C: and working,
after about 14hours of work. Thanks, Roxio :-(