HELP: how to change letter of system drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrew Wan
  • Start date Start date
A

Andrew Wan

I have a 120GB hard drive, with the following partition table:

C: 32GB Primary FAT32
Rest 88GB Extended containing:
D: 32GB Logical FAT32
E: 56GB Logical NTFS

Everything was fine until I decided to reformat & reinstall Windows XP in
C:. I inserted my CD and got to the partition table setup blue screen. I
deleted C: and recreated it using the 'c' button. Once Windows was
installed, it has a drive letter of D:, while my first logical is now C:.
Why did this happen? It has never happened like this before.

Now it stores autoexec.bat, config.sys, io.sys, msdos.sys ntldr in C: which
is my 2nd partition. How can I get C: to the 1st partition? I cannot change
drive letters on system drives....
 
Andrew Wan said:
I have a 120GB hard drive, with the following partition table:

C: 32GB Primary FAT32
Rest 88GB Extended containing:
D: 32GB Logical FAT32
E: 56GB Logical NTFS

Everything was fine until I decided to reformat & reinstall Windows XP in
C:. I inserted my CD and got to the partition table setup blue screen. I
deleted C: and recreated it using the 'c' button. Once Windows was
installed, it has a drive letter of D:, while my first logical is now C:.
Why did this happen? It has never happened like this before.

Now it stores autoexec.bat, config.sys, io.sys, msdos.sys ntldr in C:
which is my 2nd partition. How can I get C: to the 1st partition? I cannot
change drive letters on system drives....
Click to expand...

While it is possible to force a letter change, you would end up
with a very unhappy Windows installation. You either live with
your drive letter assignment or else re-install Windows. Disconnect
all external disks and make sure that Windows goes into the first
partition.
 
Pegasus (MVP) said:
While it is possible to force a letter change, you would end up
with a very unhappy Windows installation. You either live with
your drive letter assignment or else re-install Windows. Disconnect
all external disks and make sure that Windows goes into the first
partition.
Click to expand...
 
Andrew said:
I have a 120GB hard drive, with the following partition table:

C: 32GB Primary FAT32
Rest 88GB Extended containing:
D: 32GB Logical FAT32
E: 56GB Logical NTFS

Everything was fine until I decided to reformat & reinstall Windows XP in
C:. I inserted my CD and got to the partition table setup blue screen. I
deleted C: and recreated it using the 'c' button. Once Windows was
installed, it has a drive letter of D:, while my first logical is now C:.
Why did this happen? It has never happened like this before.
Click to expand...

Adding to the advice already received from Pegasus, when you delete and
recreate partitions during the Windows setup, after you are done with
the partition work and before you start to install Windows you should
exit and restart the Windows setup, that will force a reenumeration of
the drives and avoid drive letter mix ups like the one you have experienced.

John
 
The date and time was 1/4/2008 5:09 AM, and on a whim, John John pounded
out on the keyboard:
Adding to the advice already received from Pegasus, when you delete and
recreate partitions during the Windows setup, after you are done with
the partition work and before you start to install Windows you should
exit and restart the Windows setup, that will force a reenumeration of
the drives and avoid drive letter mix ups like the one you have experienced.

John
Click to expand...

Strange, I've never had to do that before. I'm guessing that somehow
the OP didn't delete the partition like he thought, and didn't look at
the allocation layout prior to reinstalling.

--
Terry R.

***Reply Note***
Anti-spam measures are included in my email address.
Delete NOSPAM from the email address after clicking Reply.
 
Back
Top