Drives reversed

[news.microsoft.com]

I just reinstalled Windows XP Professional on my computer only to discover
that Windows was installed on drive E rather than drive C. My hard drive is
partitioned into two drives, which stangely enough are drive E and drive C.
How this happened, I do not know. When I try to rename the drives, Windows
will not allow me to make the changes so that the drives are C and D with
the operating system on drive C and my data is on drive D..

How can I get my drives to show the way they should?

 

[philo]

I just reinstalled Windows XP Professional on my computer only to discover
that Windows was installed on drive E rather than drive C. My hard drive is
partitioned into two drives, which stangely enough are drive E and drive C.
How this happened, I do not know. When I try to rename the drives, Windows
will not allow me to make the changes so that the drives are C and D with
the operating system on drive C and my data is on drive D..

How can I get my drives to show the way they should?

You simly chose the wrong drive when you did the reinstall.
However...having windows installed on the E drive won't hurt anything

 

[John John]

You will have to reinstall Windows if you want to change that. Did you
do a clean isntall? Did you delete and recreate partitions during the
setup? Where are the files boot.ini, ntldr and NTDETECT.COM currently
located? Before you try to install again take a look at the partitions
in the Disk Management tool and make sure that the partition on which
you want to install Windows is marked as the Active or System partition.

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I just reinstalled Windows XP Professional on my computer only to discover
that Windows was installed on drive E rather than drive C. My hard drive is
partitioned into two drives, which stangely enough are drive E and drive C.
How this happened, I do not know. When I try to rename the drives, Windows
will not allow me to make the changes so that the drives are C and D with
the operating system on drive C and my data is on drive D..

Correct. You can change the drive letter of any drive except the one
Windows is installed on.

How can I get my drives to show the way they should?

There is no "should." Although it's unusual, there's nothing wrong
with the way it is, and no real downside to having Windows installed
on E. I've had Windows installed on F: here for years, and never had a
single problem with its being that way.