Tricky drive letter assignment problem

[Guest]

I have an established windows xp pro x64 installation, originally installed
properly to drive C:

I recently put in another hard drive, which for some reason bumped my system
drive up to G: instead of C: with the newly installed drive taking up the
designation C:

When the system tries to boot up, it won't progress beyond the initial blue
windows screen. It will, however, load up most of the background services and
processes, allowing me to do things such as access the registry remotely,
where i can modify the mounteddevices keys to their correct configuration.
Since i have no method of shutting the computer down, these registry changes
are dropped on the hard reset, leaving me back at quare one. I never get the
windows user UI, nor does the remote shutdown from command line function work
(I receive a "Device is not ready" error).

I also can't access the logical disk manager remotely, and if I could, its
likely that i would not be able to change the drive letters, since they do
include my system partition.

I have also tried booting into the recovery console and running fixmbr and
fixboot both, neither of which worked. my computer still assigns my system
partition the drive letter of G, while the registry still points to a now
nonexistant C.

the event log on this computer shows no major problems, but a very odd entry
for the plug and play service, which may or may not be related to the
solution, is:

The Plug and Play operation cannot be completed because a device driver is
preventing the device from stopping. The name of the device driver is listed
as the vetoing service name below.

Vetoed device:
STORAGE\VOLUME\1&30A96598&0&SIGNATURE9E078E97OFFSET7E00LENGTH113C61D200
Vetoing device:
STORAGE\Volume\1&30a96598&0&Signature9E078E97Offset7E00Length113C61D200
Vetoing service name: FileSystem\Ntfs
Veto type 6: PNP_VetoDevice

When Windows attempts to install, upgrade, remove, or reconfigure a device,
it queries the driver responsible for that device to confirm that the
operation can be performed. If any of these drivers denies permission
(query-removal veto), then the computer must be restarted in order to
complete the operation.

User Action
Restart your computer.

I've been working on this issue for a couple hours, and have gone through
the majority of the microsoft knowledge base in the process.

My alternatives at this point are to either do a restore to my install
default registry, to do a complete reinstall, or to find a way to edit the
registry file itself, which I would replace via the recovery console.

So if anyone knows either another solution to my problem, or a method to
edit the individual registry files (windows\system32\config) as to brook no
argument as to whether or not my changes would be saved on a hard shutdown, I
would appreciate the insight.

 

[RWS]

I have an established windows xp pro x64 installation, originally installed
properly to drive C:

I recently put in another hard drive, which for some reason bumped my system
drive up to G: instead of C: with the newly installed drive taking up the
designation C:

When the system tries to boot up, it won't progress beyond the initial blue
windows screen. It will, however, load up most of the background services and
processes, allowing me to do things such as access the registry remotely,
where i can modify the mounteddevices keys to their correct configuration.
Since i have no method of shutting the computer down, these registry changes
are dropped on the hard reset, leaving me back at quare one. I never get the
windows user UI, nor does the remote shutdown from command line function work
(I receive a "Device is not ready" error).

I also can't access the logical disk manager remotely, and if I could, its
likely that i would not be able to change the drive letters, since they do
include my system partition.

I have also tried booting into the recovery console and running fixmbr and
fixboot both, neither of which worked. my computer still assigns my system
partition the drive letter of G, while the registry still points to a now
nonexistant C.

the event log on this computer shows no major problems, but a very odd entry
for the plug and play service, which may or may not be related to the
solution, is:

The Plug and Play operation cannot be completed because a device driver is
preventing the device from stopping. The name of the device driver is listed
as the vetoing service name below.

Vetoed device:
STORAGE\VOLUME\1&30A96598&0&SIGNATURE9E078E97OFFSET7E00LENGTH113C61D200
Vetoing device:
STORAGE\Volume\1&30a96598&0&Signature9E078E97Offset7E00Length113C61D200
Vetoing service name: FileSystem\Ntfs
Veto type 6: PNP_VetoDevice

When Windows attempts to install, upgrade, remove, or reconfigure a device,
it queries the driver responsible for that device to confirm that the
operation can be performed. If any of these drivers denies permission
(query-removal veto), then the computer must be restarted in order to
complete the operation.

User Action
Restart your computer.

I've been working on this issue for a couple hours, and have gone through
the majority of the microsoft knowledge base in the process.

My alternatives at this point are to either do a restore to my install
default registry, to do a complete reinstall, or to find a way to edit the
registry file itself, which I would replace via the recovery console.

So if anyone knows either another solution to my problem, or a method to
edit the individual registry files (windows\system32\config) as to brook no
argument as to whether or not my changes would be saved on a hard shutdown, I
would appreciate the insight.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Since this issue started immediately after installing a new hard drive,
most likely you hooked that drive up as the primary master and have
it listed as the first boot device in the BIOS.
Sounds to me like you need to inspect how exactly you connected
that new drive and check out the Boot Sequence in the BIOS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Guest]

Thats a fairly accurate assessment of the initial problem, it was a sATA
drive added to the machine over an existing sATA raid0 configuration. The new
sATA drive took over C: but since ntldr uses drive and partition ID's instead
of letters, it still boots to the correct drive, which then looks for files
based on drive letter, which still says C: because that was how it was
installed, while the actual data currently resides on G:

This means that although it is booting the correct drive, it then begins to
look for the windows data from a drive that doesnt have it. I'm looking for a
way to modify the drive letters of the machine without touching the logical
disk manager, which wouldnt change my system drive letter anyway.

The proper way to do this is by using the mounteddevice keys in the
registry. i can make these changes remotely, but the changes are not saved on
a hard shutdown, which is my only option for shutting the machine down,
since theres no user UI and the remote shutdown utility states that "the
device is not ready".

So the dilemma is that I need a way to directly modify the working registry
of the machine, so that my G drive once again becomes my C drive.

If there is a way to modify the registry file itself without booting to the
OS, which is impossible for me to do currently, then i would be able to swap
out the registry files in the recovery console.

but to directly respond to your suggestion, I have made sure that the
partition i want to be booted to is the only partition currently connected. I
have disconnected all other drives and devices.

 

[RWS]

Thats a fairly accurate assessment of the initial problem, it was a sATA
drive added to the machine over an existing sATA raid0 configuration. The new
sATA drive took over C: but since ntldr uses drive and partition ID's instead
of letters, it still boots to the correct drive, which then looks for files
based on drive letter, which still says C: because that was how it was
installed, while the actual data currently resides on G:

This means that although it is booting the correct drive, it then begins to
look for the windows data from a drive that doesnt have it. I'm looking for a
way to modify the drive letters of the machine without touching the logical
disk manager, which wouldnt change my system drive letter anyway.

The proper way to do this is by using the mounteddevice keys in the
registry. i can make these changes remotely, but the changes are not saved on
a hard shutdown, which is my only option for shutting the machine down,
since theres no user UI and the remote shutdown utility states that "the
device is not ready".

So the dilemma is that I need a way to directly modify the working registry
of the machine, so that my G drive once again becomes my C drive.

If there is a way to modify the registry file itself without booting to the
OS, which is impossible for me to do currently, then i would be able to swap
out the registry files in the recovery console.

but to directly respond to your suggestion, I have made sure that the
partition i want to be booted to is the only partition currently connected. I
have disconnected all other drives and devices.

 

[Guest]

You need to remove the disk-signature from the MBR of the wrongly-assigned
disk, with a sector-editor. That is the fix for IDE disks.
Exactly what this would involve on a RAID setup I'm not sure though.