Hard drive problems

[Gary]

I recently began experiencing problems with my hard
drive. Short version of the story: I installed a new
one, copied the old drive to the new but couldn't boot
from new alone. Ended up installing WinXP on the new. It
boots, but the computer thinks it is the G: drive, if the
old is hooked up or not.

Is there any way to change that drive letter? If not,
what can I do--quickly--short of re-formatting, etc.

 

[Richard Trusson [MSFT]]

You can not change the drive letter of your system or boot volume. See
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223769 which is also
true for Windows XP. The only way to reset this to C: would be to reinstall
Windows XP. Having the system/boot partition as G: is not harmful to your
computer just not what you are used to, you could just leave it as is if you
do not want to reinstall.



--
regards,

Richard

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[BobDelaney]

You sometimes cannot just copy an old hard drive. It depends on how you
go about it. Most hard disks come with a utility to mirror the old to the
new, which is a different process than just copying. In reinstalling Windows
XP, you installed it on a separate partition. There is nothing wrong with
having your bootable partition be something other than C:, though some
poorly-written setup routines expect C: to be the bootable drive.
In your case, back up everything you need to keep, and boot from the
Windows CD. go into the Recovery Console, delete all partitions, reformat
the hard drive, and install Windows XP clean from the bootable CD. This way,
you *will* end up with a C: partition for your copy of Windows, and all will
perform as you expect.