Changing drive letter of the boot/WinXP drive/partition

D

dave

Hi all,

We just migrated a system from old drives (that were full)
to newer larger counterparts - including the original drive C.

We've now got the new version (on the larger drives) up and running
but for some reason the system/WinXP boot drive has drive letter F
in WinXP - we need to change it to C, how do we do this (fdisk does
not seem to be giving correct information) ?

bye
Dave
 
G

Guest

I had a similar problem a while ago. What I ended up doing was unplugging all
the drives and then plugging them in one by one in the order that I wanted.
The drive I wanted for C I plugged in then rebooted. The drive for D was
plugged in next then a reboot, etc. I'm sure there is an easier way, but this
worked for me. Not sure about fdisk either.
 
D

dave

Hi,

That's a decent solution :)
Unfortunately I should have said "partitions", the new drive
with the old C also has the old D and E :)

bye
Dave
 
R

Rob B.

Start menu, right click My Computer, Manage, Computer management
console will start. In menu tree at left, click Disk Management. Click
on what is now your F drive to highlight it. Then, at top of window, click
Action, All Tasks, Change Drive Letter/Paths... It's self explanitory
from there.
 
R

Rob B.

Try this also. (sorry just thought of it) You might also do a "Rescan
Disks" in the Action menu.
Hope that helps.
 
R

Richard Urban

You can NOT change the drive letter of the Windows partition. The operating
system MUST be reinstalled to the correct partition.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
D

dave

You can NOT change the drive letter of the Windows partition. The
operating
system MUST be reinstalled to the correct partition.
Click to expand...

?????????

We tried again:

1. We re-FDISK'ed the destination drive so the boot partition was C
2. We Ghost'd the old drive C across to the new C partition (Ghost 9)
3. We booted the new drive, after bootup and sorting itself WinXP insists
it's drive F not C !!

We've tried this with the new C partition in both NTFS and Fat 32 formats
now with the same results.

We absolutely have to have WinXP on C and there is no room
on the old drive !! Please help !!
 
R

Richard Urban

What you are doing IS NOT a reinstall. Boot up from the Windows XP retail CD
to install the operating system. When you get to the screen where you can
choose your install partition/drive, make certain that it is the correct
one. If it is already in use you must delete that partition, create a new
partition (and make sure it is seen as drive/partition C:) and format the
partition. If you do this the operating system will be on drive/partition C:

But YOU have to make it happen!


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
D

dave

Richard Urban said:
What you are doing IS NOT a reinstall. Boot up from the Windows XP retail CD
to install the operating system. When you get to the screen where you can
choose your install partition/drive, make certain that it is the correct
one. If it is already in use you must delete that partition, create a new
partition (and make sure it is seen as drive/partition C:) and format the
partition. If you do this the operating system will be on drive/partition C:

But YOU have to make it happen!


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
Click to expand...

I take it from this reply that WindowsXP has no way of migrating
an existing installation to a new drive and the only option is to
do a rediculously tedious time consuming complete re-installation ?
 
G

GTS

The procedure in the article below will work in the case where XP was
ghosted from a C drive and the image is restored to a new drive which picks
up a different letter. In that case references in the registry point to C.
(This should not be used if the original installation was not to C.)
BOOT.INI must also be accordingly modified.

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188

NOTE - To prevent this problem occurring after restoring a ghost image -
BEFORE THE FIRST BOOT, disconnect all removable drives. There is a bug in
XP (which also impacts initial installations) whereby it fails to properly
enumerate and label drives. It should, of course, identify hard
drives/partitions and label them starting with C, but it actually starts the
sequence with removable drives first.
 
R

Richard Urban

Of course you can migrate to a new drive. You just can not change the drive
letter of the install drive by doing so. It may end up on a new drive C:,
but it won't work!

An image is exactly what it says - an exact duplication of what you had.
Every pointer in the original system pointed to other than drive C:. How do
you expect this to be changed by restoring an image to a new drive C:?

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
D

dave

I'm confused by your reply.

The old installation was on drive/partition C, we want the new migrated
version
of it to be on the new drive/partition C.
We fdisk the destination hardrive with a partition C set up
We ghost from the old drive C to the partition (fdisked as C) on the new
harddrive.
Now when booting the migrated version from the new drive WindowsXP
continually
sets up with the WinXP/boot partition named as F ! Where is it getting F
from ?
 
R

Richard Urban

OK. Now I see what you are really doing.

You DON"T have to fdisk anything prior to installing a Ghost image on a new
drive. Just install the image to the drive. The partition is
created/formatted automatically. Remember, if you had a 20 gig, NTFS
partition as drive C: before, that is what you will have after you restore
the image. If you had Drive C: before - you will have Drive C: now - unless
you have something stupid going on, like a zip drive connected while you are
doing the restore. It will always hijack drive/partition C: for itself, no
matter what you try to do to stop it from happening. Thank You Omega! (-:

It also would not hurt to remove any USB thumb drives while you are
restoring. Anything that may commandeer drive C: before the image is
restored should be removed. Many of these devices take the first available
drive letter when first presented to the PC. Good bye drive C:

Again, do NOT fdisk. There is no need to do so.


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
G

GTS

You got it now (see my earlier post) but one point of clarification.
Devices don't "commandeer" a drive letter. Drive assignment is a function
of the BIOS and the operating system. The problem of failing to letter
drives properly is a bug in Windows XP and Windows 2003 specifically and
comes into play in 2 circumstances:
1. An initial installation is done while a Zip drive or a removable (most
often a USB drive or a media card reader) drive is attached. The
installation program incorrectly enumerates the drives by failing to
distinguish between hard drives and removables. This can only be changed by
a reinstallation without the removables attached.

2. The FIRST BOOT of XP after a ghost restore takes place with a removable
drive attached. This is a particularly odd situation because Windows will
actually change the system drive letter and boot.ini file from C to the
higher letter while leaving registry data generally pointing to C. This
results in a highly unstable system. This can be fixed as described in my
prior post.

These articles address the XP and 2003 problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;896536
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;326683
 
D

dg1261

dave said:
1. We re-FDISK'ed the destination drive so the boot partition was C
2. We Ghost'd the old drive C across to the new C partition (Ghost 9)
3. We booted the new drive, after bootup and sorting itself WinXP
insists it's drive F not C !!
Click to expand...

That's a fairly common problem. See my webpage at
www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm for a detailed explanation. I see
you've already bailed and reinstalled, but see "Kawecki's Trick" at the
bottom of the page for what would have been a very simple solution.
 

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