Lost C Drive - Drive letter changed

[Guest]

I had WinXp on drive C and (2 other optical drives D & E). I just installed
my game hard drive and the letter came up as F (I wanted F to be D so I
changed opitcal drive D to G so it would free up D) That was no problem, But
when I tried to find letter F to change the temp optical G back to it was
gone. So I closed out of that and tried to open programs and I found my C
drive had changed to F and I did not change it to anything. Can anybody help
- puter won't boot now.

Thanks for the help...

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I had WinXp on drive C and (2 other optical drives D & E). I just installed
my game hard drive and the letter came up as F (I wanted F to be D so I
changed opitcal drive D to G so it would free up D) That was no problem, But
when I tried to find letter F to change the temp optical G back to it was
gone. So I closed out of that and tried to open programs and I found my C
drive had changed to F and I did not change it to anything. Can anybody help
- puter won't boot now.

Thanks for the help...

Can you be a little more specific? " - puter won't boot" sounds
cute but tells us nothing. How far will it get? What messages
do you see on the screen?

Also: Is this a networked PC? Do you have access to another
WinXP/2000 PC?

 

[Guest]

Remove cable for all drices except old "C" drive. See if yuo can boot up.
If so, reconnect other devices one by one until all restored.
Reboot after eacgh new connection. Shutdown, etc...............

 

[Guest]

It acts like it is going to start. I have tried unpluging all the drives. It
gets to the windows start screen and just sits there with just the original C
drive hooked up.

 

[WTC]

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=223188

You are going to need a BartPE Bootable CD or a networked XP Machine to make
the necessary registry changes to the computer that is experiencing this
problem. You also could slave your hard drive to make the necessary registry
changes to another XP machine.

How to edit the registry offline using BartPE boot CD ?
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/peboot.htm

 

[Guest]

Is there any way to change the registry on that drive to have it reconize F
as the main C drive. I can get to all the widow files when I hook it up
through a usb external.
Thanks

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No. If Windows was installed on drive C: then it must always
be visible on drive C:. You have to use one of the methods
described in the other replies to modify your registry. The
easiest is to modify it via a networked PC.

 

[WTC]

A couple of questions....Is this USB external some sort of Hard drive caddy
that you just installed the hard drive that cannot log into Windows? Once
your finished editing the registry to be able to log in then you will
install this hard drive as an internal drive? What OS are you running to
look at these files?

And do you still wish to have Windows on the C drive instead of F?