Hard drive with 2 drive letters.

[Ka1oxd]

I am having a problem with my Windows XP. I have one single partion and one
drive. When I start up the recovery console, and type MAP the hard drive
comes back as drive c: and device\harddisk0\partition1 which is correct. If
I go into Windows, bring up windows explorer, I have both drive c & d. It
seems that for some reason, it is assigning the one physical partition as
both c & d and the OS keeps assigning the %SystemRoot% to d:\windows\system32.

I have tried using fixmbr, fixboot, and other items. nothing gets rid of
the ghost drive that does not phsyically exist. anyone got any ideas?

 

[Andrew E.]

In my computer it shows the partition.If so,if you want to delete it,boot
to xp
cd,recovery,in recovery typeiskPart In DiskPart,delete the partition,press
Esc key to exit,type:EXIT

 

[Ka1oxd]

C & D are both device\harddisk0\partition1. If I use diskPart will that not
erase everything that is on the physical drive?

 

[Sunny]

|I am having a problem with my Windows XP. I have one single partion and
one
| drive. When I start up the recovery console, and type MAP the hard
drive
| comes back as drive c: and device\harddisk0\partition1 which is correct.
If
| I go into Windows, bring up windows explorer, I have both drive c & d.
It
| seems that for some reason, it is assigning the one physical partition
as
| both c & d and the OS keeps assigning the %SystemRoot% to
d:\windows\system32.
|
| I have tried using fixmbr, fixboot, and other items. nothing gets rid
of
| the ghost drive that does not phsyically exist. anyone got any ideas?

Is the hard drive in Win explorer shown as two separate hard drives?
What are the CD'DVD drives named?
If drive "D" is separate, can you access it to see what, if anything, is
on it (including any hidden or recovery files)?

Have you accessed disk management rather than "recovery console?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I am having a problem with my Windows XP. I have one single partion and one
drive. When I start up the recovery console, and type MAP the hard drive
comes back as drive c: and device\harddisk0\partition1 which is correct. If
I go into Windows, bring up windows explorer, I have both drive c & d. It
seems that for some reason, it is assigning the one physical partition as
both c & d and the OS keeps assigning the %SystemRoot% to d:\windows\system32.

I have tried using fixmbr, fixboot, and other items. nothing gets rid of
the ghost drive that does not phsyically exist. anyone got any ideas?

If you are sure that both drive letter point to the
same partition then remove on by the mountvol command:

mountvol D: /D


Uwe

 

[Ka1oxd]

Oh yes, windows explore is showing the same physical drive with the same
exact file structure as both C & D. I also have 2 CD-rom/DVD installed. they
come up as E & F. So I have another questiion. If the boot drive is C: and
the %Systemrot0% maps to d: will this automatically change to the appropriate
drive C: or will there be other items I would have to fix? Like running the
recovery console and again fix the MBR & fixboot?

 

[Ka1oxd]

Under Disk Manager, it shows only one drive, called c: no reference to drive
d: There never has been a mirror drive in this system either. If I copy
files to my documents on drive d they show up on drive c

 

[John John]

Do you have any substituted drives? Open a Command Prompt and issue the
SUBST command, what does it return?

John

 

[Uwe Sieber]

The disk management is probably not able to deal with
more than one drive letter per drive and therefore
show one only.

If %systemroot% points to D:\Windows then there is
a serious problem and removing letter D: will completely
screw up the system because there may be lots of
references to D:.

Which letter is the one that Windows had after
installation? If it was C: then removing D: may
work.

Before removing D: I would do a registry search and
replace of D:\ to C:\. A good tool for this job is
this:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/files/regsrch1.zip

But there is no guarantee, better create an image
of the system partition before...


Uwe

 

[Ka1oxd]

To answer a couple of questions. The boot drive is c:, but it keeps moving
the "%SystemRoot% to drive d:. I ran the SUBST command and there is no
virtual drives mounted.

I will backup the drive and try again this weekend with mountvol command.

 

[Andy]

I am having a problem with my Windows XP. I have one single partion and one
drive. When I start up the recovery console, and type MAP the hard drive
comes back as drive c: and device\harddisk0\partition1 which is correct. If
I go into Windows, bring up windows explorer, I have both drive c & d. It
seems that for some reason, it is assigning the one physical partition as
both c & d and the OS keeps assigning the %SystemRoot% to d:\windows\system32.

I have tried using fixmbr, fixboot, and other items. nothing gets rid of
the ghost drive that does not phsyically exist. anyone got any ideas?

Run regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, and
delete \DosDevices\D:.
Reboot.

 

[Ka1oxd]

Andy, I created a restore point, deleted that entry, went through and changed
all the d:\windows to c:\windows and rebooted the computer. Guess what? I
still have c: and d: %Systemroot% still points to d:\windows\system32 and
ComSec - d:\windows\system32\cmd.exe. windir = d:\windows

Where do we go from here? Re-install windows?

 

[John John]

Download WinObj and see if it can shed some light on the this mysterious
symbolic link:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896657.aspx

John