Drive Letter Problem

[orson]

Hi,
My hard IDE drive crashed recently, it was only my boot/system drive
so no valuable data was lost.
I then reinstalled a new SATA drive. My system has another IDE drive
with data on it so for some reason the new unpartitioned SATA drive
didn't get the drive letter C and i hate that. So i decided to
disconnect the ide drive, and only leave the SATA connected, I booted
the WinXP CD, and viola only 1 drive listed; i then created the
partition and it was drive C. windows installed perfectly, all drivers
installed fine after that.

Now when i try to connect the other drive windows doesn't boot. I
booted with ERD Commander with both drives connected and ERD Commander
lists the data drive as C, and my boot drive as D so no wonder it
doesn't boot.

So to summarize, my sata boot drive is C when it's connected alone,
but when i connect my ide data drive it becomes C and makes my boot
drive D so my system becomes unbootable. confusing i know.

How can i fix it. Any help is appreciated.

Orson

 

[Bill Blanton]

Hi,
My hard IDE drive crashed recently, it was only my boot/system drive
so no valuable data was lost.
I then reinstalled a new SATA drive. My system has another IDE drive
with data on it so for some reason the new unpartitioned SATA drive
didn't get the drive letter C and i hate that. So i decided to
disconnect the ide drive, and only leave the SATA connected, I booted
the WinXP CD, and viola only 1 drive listed; i then created the
partition and it was drive C. windows installed perfectly, all drivers
installed fine after that.

Now when i try to connect the other drive windows doesn't boot. I
booted with ERD Commander with both drives connected and ERD Commander
lists the data drive as C, and my boot drive as D so no wonder it
doesn't boot.

So to summarize, my sata boot drive is C when it's connected alone,
but when i connect my ide data drive it becomes C and makes my boot
drive D so my system becomes unbootable. confusing i know.

How can i fix it. Any help is appreciated.

Any error messages when it doesn't boot? Check that the BIOS is still properly
configured to boot the SATA drive before the IDE drive.


If the BIOS is correct, then try this-

Disconnect the IDE drive and boot to Windows.

Open regedit and delete the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices key.

Reboot to XP with the IDE drive still disconnected.

Shut down and reconnect the IDE drive.


If this doesn't work, post your boot.ini file.