Drive letter changes under dual boot win2k/xp install

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dan
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D

Dan

I have a dual HDD dual boot PC, one disk running win2k, on the other I
just installed XP home (I had another install of win2k there previously
but formatted & installed XP). Since my larger HDD (win2k) is
partitioned, I have C, D & E drives. When I installed XP on what had
always been the C drive, XP has transposed C & D (when you go into WE in
XP, what had always been C is now D & vise versa). XP is on D. The
boot.ini is on D under win2k, C under XP, but my understanding is for
boot purposes the PC ignores the letter designation & refers to the
drives by number/partition. How can I change the letters back to agree
with the win2k install?

Thanks,

Dan
 
Dan said:
I have a dual HDD dual boot PC, one disk running win2k, on the other I
just installed XP home (I had another install of win2k there previously
but formatted & installed XP). Since my larger HDD (win2k) is
partitioned, I have C, D & E drives. When I installed XP on what had
always been the C drive, XP has transposed C & D (when you go into WE in
XP, what had always been C is now D & vise versa). XP is on D. The
boot.ini is on D under win2k, C under XP, but my understanding is for
boot purposes the PC ignores the letter designation & refers to the
drives by number/partition. How can I change the letters back to agree
with the win2k install?

Thanks,

Dan
Click to expand...

After reading your post three times, I'm none the wiser as to what
you have and what you would like to achieve. Perhaps a tabular
presentation might clarify things, e.g.

Disk 1, partition 1 contains ???
Disk 1, partition 2 contains ???
Disk 2, partition 1 contains ???
Disk 2, partition 2 contains ???

Current Situation
============
When booting into Win2000 then I see ??? as drive ???.
I also see ??? as drive ???.

When booting into WinXP then I see ??? as drive ???.
I also see ??? as drive ???.

Desired Situation
============
When booting into Win2000 then I want to see ??? as drive ???.
I also see ??? as drive ???.

When booting into WinXP then I want ot see ??? as drive ???.
I also see ??? as drive ???.

Note that when Win2000/XP is installed under a given drive
letter then it must remain under that drive letter. This is why it
is preferable to use a third party boot manager such as XOSL:
It lets you treat each OS completely independently from any
other OS, and each OS can be made to appear on drive C:.
 
Thanks for the reply, sorry to be so confusing.

Disk 1 partition 1 contains XP. When running XP, Disk 1 partition 1 is
referred to as D:\. Under win2k it is called C:\

Disk 2 partition 1 contains only storage. Under win2k Disk 2 partition
1 is referred to as D:\. Under XP it is referred to as C:\

Disk 2 partition 2 contains win2k. Disk 2 partition 2 is referred to
as E:\ by both OS's.

I would like all the letters to be the same under either OS, however I'm
beginning to think this only matters to ME, that the OS's themselves
don't really CARE which letter they are referred to. And since I
obviously will not be running BOTH OS's at once, no conflicts will
occur. Although the difference is potentially confusing (again to ME,
apparently not to the PC) I guess from a functional standpoint, it
doesn't really matter. If this is true, the easiest thing would
probably be to live with it.

As an aside, boot.ini is now on Disk 2 partition 1. Could this be why a
new XP install wants to call this partition C:\?

Thanks again!
 
While you use the native Windows boot manager, it is
not possible to have WinXP and Win2000 visible on
drive C: if they are installed in different partitions.

It may be possible to change drive D: to drive C: when
running WinXP - it all depends on how the installation
saw the drive letters. Attempting to change the drive
letter subsequently is risky - you might cripple the whole
installation.

I recommend that you leave things as they are. At a
later stage, when you reload your OSs for some reason,
consider the modular approach: To install each OS as a
completely independent entity. As I mentioned before,
you need a third-party boot manager for this. I lean
towards XOSL, because it's extremely versatile and
because it's free.
 
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