My hard drive must be drunk

[george]

This morning when I powered up one of my computers, it loaded things
rather crazy.

I am running XP SP2. The hard drive is the only hard drive - wired as
Primary Master. When power-up is completed, I find the boot drive
created as E drive. There are no C and D drives (My Computer). What
on earth would cause this?

One thing I do remember is that about a month ago, I was using this
hard drive in another machine as the third drive mounted, and I was
experimenting with 'double-booting' by modifying the boot.ini file. At
that time I had C, D, and E drives, the last being this hard drive.
The double-booting worked fine. But that was way in the past. The
boot.ini file now is the normal, default one.

George

 

[jw]

Basically, even though the boot drive should have been created as C
drive, but was E drive instead - the fact is the desktop icons all
came from the desktop on the drive. The problem with that is, the
desktop icons are mostly shortcuts all of which point to apps on which
are supposed to be on C drive, and now they are on E drive, and so
they fail.

As an experiment, I installed the hard drive back in the double-boot
environment I had a month ago. It was hard wired as Secondary Master.
I selected that drive in the double boot menu I had created in the
boot.ini file, and it booted up fine - BUT the drive was still
manifested as E drive, not C drive. And so, the desktop icons all
fail the same way.

Now I just know that a month ago when I did the dual boot thing, this
did not happen. That is, the problem drive came up pretty much the
same, but the result placed that drive as C drive. And therefore the
icons all worked.

So - I am not understanding something I'm thinking. What could it be?

 

[Sjouke Burry]

This morning when I powered up one of my computers, it loaded things
rather crazy.

I am running XP SP2. The hard drive is the only hard drive - wired as
Primary Master. When power-up is completed, I find the boot drive
created as E drive. There are no C and D drives (My Computer). What
on earth would cause this?

One thing I do remember is that about a month ago, I was using this
hard drive in another machine as the third drive mounted, and I was
experimenting with 'double-booting' by modifying the boot.ini file. At
that time I had C, D, and E drives, the last being this hard drive.
The double-booting worked fine. But that was way in the past. The
boot.ini file now is the normal, default one.

George

OOPS. When you put a disk in an xp machine it gets a permanent mark
for the drive letter, and there can be only ONE C drive.
You might find a utility on the net or at Microsoft, to change
the drive letter assignment back......

 

[George]

OOPS. When you put a disk in an xp machine it gets a permanent mark
for the drive letter, and there can be only ONE C drive.
You might find a utility on the net or at Microsoft, to change
the drive letter assignment back......

That's a surprise! If true, I don't know how double-booting would
EVER work. That would be because if I optionally boot up from a drive
that is NOT C drive, then the shortcuts on that optional drive would
all be wrong, and actually put stuff in the wrong place (C drive). I
just know that did not happem a month ago. Oh well............

 

[Sjouke Burry]

That's a surprise! If true, I don't know how double-booting would
EVER work. That would be because if I optionally boot up from a drive
that is NOT C drive, then the shortcuts on that optional drive would
all be wrong, and actually put stuff in the wrong place (C drive). I
just know that did not happem a month ago. Oh well............

Well, I checked MS, and found:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188
Read it carefully, then edit the registry.

 

[George]

Well, I checked MS, and found:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188
Read it carefully, then edit the registry.

Thanks for reply.
I have read MS's item and printed it. It reads scary.
I am sitting here with two hard drives, both originally created
separately as bootable C drives with XP SP2. And they worked fine.
Now they are connected, one as Primary Master and one as Secondary
Master. I call them DRIVE 1 and DRIVE 2, respectively.
My DVD burner is and was Primary Slave.
The hard drive 'priority' in the BIOS is set to DRIVE 1 first.

The boot.ini file on both is:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="DRIVE 1. Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="DRIVE 2. Microsoft
Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Of course, the boot.ini file generates a startup menu allowing the
selection of DRIVES, with a default of DRIVE 2. I select menu item 2.

The results are strange:
The welcome is different for the two drives (usernames are different),
and so I can tell which drive is being booted up supposedly. It is
DRIVE 2, as it should be. That's despite the fact that DRIVE 1
becomes C drive and DRIVE 2 becomes E drive. But what is worse is
that the desktop screen is for DRIVE 2 as it should be (the desktop
icons are arranged differently for the two drives). but gives bad
results because if I double-click on a desktop icon that points to an
app on drive C of course, it executes the app from the wrong drive. I
end up with data on the wrong drive.

Strange that the Welcome and desktop screens are correct, but the
drive letters are not.

George

 

[Andy]

Boot Windows from that drive, and run regedit.
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices.
Delete \DosDevices\C:, \DosDevices\D:, etc.
Reboot.
New entries will be created starting from C:.