Drive Letters

[James]

XP Pro on primary disk drive. Vista on secondary drive, fresh format. RC2
Ultimate.

Whenever I boot into XP, my primary drive (XP Pro drive) has the drive
letter C and my Vista drive is F. When I boot in Vista, the Vista drive
letter becomes C and the XP Drive becomes D. Previously I was able to
maintain the same drive letters, but now it just seems to want to assign
them however it sees fit. Any way to have static drive letters, regardless
of which is the booted OS?

Thanks

 

[John Barnes]

With your setup, you need to install Vista from the XP desktop (you can
still do a clean install) That keeps the XP lettering.

 

[Guest]

I dont think this can be done, as Vista takes the C drive even if it has been
installed on other drive. thi is normal for Vista. Remember not to try to
change the drive letter while in Vista , else you may not be able to boot
into XP. This is normal for Vista. ANd again when you boot int XP, it'll be
shown in C drive.
SO its better to give Vol. label for better identification.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

If it is Vista x86 then you can install from the XP x86 desktop and rectify.
If you are running XP x86 and installing Vista x64 then you cannot. You
might consider just leaving the system as is. This is expected behavior
when booting the computer with the dvd and may not be worth changing.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Actually this in normal for earlier Windows as well. It all depends on
whether you start the installation from the desktop or by booting the system
with the shiny media.

 

[Guest]

But is this possible with a single drive and partitions?

Here you meant running setup within XP and selecting secondary drive for
Vista installation?
But Vista will take over the bootloader here also.
Have you tried this?

 

[James]

Yeah, I booted off of the DVD because I previously had Linux installed on
that drive and wanted to use the DVD to partition/format that drive and wipe
it clean before I proceeded. I don't own an app like partition magic or
whatever that could determine the physical drive was even there while XP was
loaded, so I chose the path of least resistance and booted off of the DVD.

Thanks though.

 

[John Barnes]

Interesting. I always had earlier versions follow the Windows 2000 schema
when installed from the disk. Never installed from a desktop, personally.
Made for interesting contortions to get the drive letter desired.

 

[Hillbilly]

Name your Vista drive/partition like I have .
I named it BV(Boot Vista).
That way I know what is what from where.

 

[mayor]

Yes, it is possible. That is how my machine is setup.

I installed each Vista iteration since RC1 on a partition of my one and only
hard drive. I installed Vista while booted into XP on my C: drive. XP runs
on C: and Vista runs on K:.

--
Leo
If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished.

 

[Chad Harris]

James--

Everyone has explained this well as Colin and John have many times over the
last few months, and the reason that this happens is that if you boot from
the DVD rather than XP on a dual boot, then the bios takes over because
setup sees the disc boot order dictating the letter assignments.

I have had to get used to it because since Build 5472, I was not able to run
setup from XP--it balked and said I had to update drivers I didn't have to
update, so I simply rebooted and setup ran. Actually lol my reboot was
forced and I discovered this by serendepity.

I don't know if this is connected, but on every build prior to RTM, I
noticed that if I shortcutted to my XP desktop and opened a notepad that was
on it or in a file/folder on my XP boot, I would have to rename this with
the a Vista file path for example change it to C:\Users\My
Profile\somewhere. With RTM, I no longer have to do so.

There may be a way to change these letters to the configuration you want, by
hacking the registry. You can set a restore point, backup the registry and
give it a shot.

According to a member of the Vista Core OS Setup\Deployemnt Team Vinny
Flynnt [Vinny Flyntt]

"You can also set drive letters using unattend.xml. This means DVD boot as
well (have the unattend.xml named autounattend.xml on a usb key or floppy,
etc - it should automatically get picked up)."

You may be able to change the drive letters via:

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/223188

CH