Drive letters mixed up

[Pat Glenn]

I have just noticed that, after a new install, my drive letters are all
mixed up My hard drive (which should be 'c') is labelled I while USB drives
are lettered C, F, G, and H and CDROM's are D and E. Basically, all I need
to do is exchange drive C and I.

Is there a tool in XP to correct this situation? I have a couple of older
programs that must be installed onto drice C or they will not work.

 

[Ed Covney]

Pat -

You need to re-installing XP with the USB drives removed or
at least turned off. Sounds like the BIOS may need an update
if a usb drive can take precedence over your IDE "boot" drive.

Ed

 

[Pat Glenn]

I've already tried that. The USB drives are a card reader, so pulling the
plug on the card reader easily takes care of that problem.

Remapping the drive with disk management doesn't work either. Disk
management will not allow you to change the
drive mapping of a disk that is locked in use. Consequently, since disk I is
being used by the OS, it can not be re-mapped as that would cause the OS to
crash during operation.

I now have drives D and E (CD-ROMS - just as I want them) and drive I (local
disk). Even in the registry, everything is mapped to I.

I suspect that the registry is where the problem is occurring. Booting into
repair mode shows that the instalation is really on drive C, but the drive
gets remapped to I when windows itself boots up. Re-installing the OS over
itself doesn't do any good either. Everything simply gets restored to it's
original faulty settings. (and I loose all my patches)

Unless I can find a way to get a virgin drive, or damage the registry
sufficiently so that it is forced to rebuild major portions of itself - I'm
stuck.

I haven't tried updating the BIOS. That'll probably be the next thing to
try. But I don't suspect that will be the issue either. It's a brand new
board (5 days) and it's the latest model from ASUS; a P5K-V with Dual core
2.2 Ghz and 4 MB RAM.

 

[Andy]

I have just noticed that, after a new install, my drive letters are all
mixed up My hard drive (which should be 'c') is labelled I while USB drives
are lettered C, F, G, and H and CDROM's are D and E. Basically, all I need
to do is exchange drive C and I.

Is there a tool in XP to correct this situation? I have a couple of older
programs that must be installed onto drice C or they will not work.

Try
<http://www.tsensus.com/2008/02/fix-an-incorrect-boot-drive-letter-in-windows-xp/>

 

[John John]

Try
<http://www.tsensus.com/2008/02/fix-an-incorrect-boot-drive-letter-in-windows-xp/>

That won't work, Andy. The procedure described there is to return the
boot drive letter back to the letter it was assigned at installation
time, not to change it to a different letter after installation. The
Windows installation must always retain the drive letter that it was
assigned during the installation.

John

 

[John John]

The only way to fix this is by reinstalling Windows, you cannot change
the boot drive letter assignment. Make sure that you disable or remove
card readers and other external drives before you do the installation.

John

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I've already tried that. The USB drives are a card reader, so pulling the
plug on the card reader easily takes care of that problem.

Remapping the drive with disk management doesn't work either. Disk
management will not allow you to change the
drive mapping of a disk that is locked in use. Consequently, since disk I is
being used by the OS, it can not be re-mapped as that would cause the OS to
crash during operation.

I now have drives D and E (CD-ROMS - just as I want them) and drive I (local
disk). Even in the registry, everything is mapped to I.

I suspect that the registry is where the problem is occurring. Booting into
repair mode shows that the instalation is really on drive C, but the drive
gets remapped to I when windows itself boots up. Re-installing the OS over
itself doesn't do any good either. Everything simply gets restored to it's
original faulty settings. (and I loose all my patches)

Pat,

changing the drive letters is a simple operation in the
registry. Check http://winhlp.com/node/71 for details.

The problem is that, if you installed Windows on drive I, it
will not take lightly to being shifted to C:. I know it, I've
done it. You would have to do a lot of advanced
search-and-replace operations all over the registry. You need
good tools for that, a lot of patience, and, if you're unlucky
and Windows doesn't even boot after the drive letter change, a
few very special registry tricks.

In short---not recommended. It is usually better to install
Windows again, and make sure it ends up on C: by removing
everything before the installation that could detract it from
that aim.

Hans-Georg

 

[Ed Covney]

Pat -

I haven't tried updating the BIOS. That'll probably be the next thing to
try. But I don't suspect that will be the issue either. It's a brand new
board (5 days) and it's the latest model from ASUS; a P5K-V with Dual core
2.2 Ghz and 4 MB RAM.

Aaahhhhh !!!!! (Don't bother with the BIOS)

I have a few of the P5KSE's (w/o video) - to work properly,
the boot & CD/DVD ROM drives should all be SATA. DO
NOT use the IDE controller until after Windows is installed.
Asus is trying to ween us off IDE - heed their warnings. (Life
is very good in the SATA world).

Ed

 

[Pat Glenn]

I spent some time talking to an A+ tech today. The first question he asked
me when I explained the situation was "Do you have a card reader?"

He then went on to explain that this happens quite frequently and it
apparently is not a flawed install. (get out the shovels...) This is a new
"enhanced feature" of the XP operating system and it has to do with XP's
ability to be installed on any drive in the system. What happens is that XP
polls all the removable devices in the system first and then places fixed
drives at the end. It does this by default. For some unexplained reason this
doesn't affect CDROM drives (even though they are removable media) as it
still places them after the hard disks. This only affects newer devices like
USB ports, card readers and removable SATA drives.

SO: Lesson learned. If you have removable media DO NOT have the hardware
installed when you do a system install. Unless, of course, you want to take
a chance as to what drive your OS runs from. Not that it really makes a
difference. The OS is just as capable of running from drive Z as from C. It
just might take a little getting used to the new arrangement.

There is only one resolution for this dilemma. Run the install to the point
where it formats the hard drive and then push the 'wipe out' button to reset
the partition. And then continue with re-installation.

 

[Pat Glenn]

What's up with the IDE?

I didn't have much of a choice. I only have IDE CDROM's and had to do my
install from one of those, but my HD is a SATA. Everything seemed to work
OK.