dual boot by mistake - can I just rename the drives?

[Niteowl]

Hi,

I just installed XP Pro onto a computer that did have Windows 98.. it has
two physical drives,

In win98 I had the C: drive on the 6G HD, and the D:, E:, and F: drives as
extended partitions on a 60G HD.

When I began the installation process of XP, I felt the 6G drive wasn't big
enough to hold the XP O/S, so I just deleted all the partitions on the
second drive, then repartitioned it into a 20G and a 40G partition, and
installed XP on the 20G partitition (D all went fine, so I guess I sorta
have a dual boot system, though much of the win98 programs are gone as they
were on the D: drive in the old setup...

My question is: Can I simply format that 6G drive and just reassign the
drive letter? (to E
Can I also reassign the Drive Letter of the current D: drive which holds the
XP O/S so it will become my C: drive and operate "normally"? I would then
reassign the current E: drive to the now available D:.

So I would end up with C: being my O/S, D: and E: would be for data storage.

thanks,
niteowl

 

[Bob I]

No, you may not just reassign the drive letter the operating system
resides on. You will need to install it on "C" if you want it on "C"

 

[John John]

You can't do that. With a bit of wizardry you could do away with the
"C:" partition and have "D:" become the active (System) partition but
you cannot rename the "D:" drive to "C:". If you want to have Windows
on C: you will have to reformat everything and start again from scratch.
If decide to do that it would be better if you make the Windows disk
the primary one and disconnect the second drive while you install
Windows, that will take care of drive letter mix ups and System
partition screw ups. The second disk can be reconnected after Windows
is installed.

John

 

[Niteowl]

Guess I'll be re-installing from scratch... I'll use that 6G in another W98
box. Funny how 6G's doesn't even seem large enough to worry with these
days.

Thanks for the info.

niteowl

 

[John John]

That (reinstalling) is the most sensible thing to do. If you put the
6GB drive on a different IDE controller than the Windows drive you could
use it for the pagefile.

John

 

[Niteowl]

that's a pretty good idea actually..

might do that, I really don't need it anywhere else..

thanks,
niteowl

 

[John John]

You're welcome. Pagefiles are better placed on fast disks, try it and
see how it works. If the Windows drive is heavily used having the
pagefile on a slower disk might still increase performance.

John