System drive came back as F:

[Andrew Chalk]

The first physical drive on my lpatop went out. It came back from the repair
place with the drive letter of that drive configured as 'F:'. Disk
Management won't let me change the letter back to C: as it is the system
disk. How can I do this?

I have a copy of XP and am willing to reinstall.
When I start the XP reinstall, Windows XP's setup screen 'sees' the drive as
C:, it is just at the OS level that it is labelled F:
This is the first physical drive in the system (drive 0?)

Many thanks.

 

[Jaki]

What is lpatop?

 

[Andrew Chalk]

laptop

 

[Kenny S]

you cannot change the letter of the drive windows is installed on.

 

[Guest]

Try booting to xp cd,at info screen select,install xp,new copy,delete the
partition
(F,create one,then xp will reformat and install as C:.Make sure no other
drives
except the cdrom with xp cd are connected.

 

[Andrew Chalk]

Thanks Andrew, that's the only useful reply so far.

One point. The XP install routine sees the drive as C:. It is just the OS
that insists on designating it as F:.

- A

 

[Nepatsfan]

Where did this disk go for repairs? Did the repair procedure
involve reinstalling XP? If it was someplace local, I'd suggest
bringing this problem to their attention. Usually this type of
behavior occurs when someone installs Windows while other types
of drives (Zip drive, external hard drive, card reader) are
attached to the computer. It's hard to speculate on what might
have happened in your case without more information.

If the installation routine sees the drive as C you might be able
to run a repair installation. Take a look here for details:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

If that doesn't work, you're going to have to reformat and run a
clean install. There is no clean and simple way to reset the
system drive letter.

 

[Andrew Chalk]

That did the trick.

Thanks.

Try booting to xp cd,at info screen select,install xp,new copy,delete the
partition
(F,create one,then xp will reformat and install as C:.Make sure no other
drives
except the cdrom with xp cd are connected.