Unable to change drive letters

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Win XP Pro SP3

Originally I had a 260 Gb hard drive partitioned as follows:-

40 Gb C: containing the operating system

220 Gb D: for storing data

I was forced to reformat the C: and reinstall XP Pro.

Now the Drive letters have been reversed.

In Disk management the 40Gb is shown as D: Healthy (boot) and the 220Gb is
shown as C: Healthy ( system )
When I attempt to change the drive names I get the following message:-

"Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot
volume"

Is there any way round this or am I stuck with the drive letters as is.
Everything works fine it is just confusing if somebody else uses the
computer. In Google there are several similar requests but none with a
solution.
All help and advice appreciated.

Joe

Hi Joe,

My guess is that you did not simply format 'C:'. What probably what
happened was you removed the 'C:' partition. When you did that then
booted the WindowsXP install disk, WindowsXP automatically made the only
defined partition (what was your 'D:' drive) the 'C:' drive so the new
partition it created for WindowsXP became the next available which is
would have been 'D:'.

In the future, just format the partition, then when you run the
WindowsXP simply tell it to install that drive and it will retain its
letter designation.

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

 

[C.Joseph Drayton]

Pegasus [MVP] wrote on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:56:24 +0100:

Yes I know one shouldn't try to change whatever drive letter of the
boot/system partition as well as you do. And I too worry about any
attempts (without a total clean install) to do so.

I do know BCDEdit (works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7)
allows you to change the boot/system drive letter. Although I believe
this is supposed to fix it after something else changed it to break it.

Also Microsoft seems to have the same fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

This IT guy (I really don't have a lot of respect for most IT guys
myself), seems to suggest that the Microsoft method will fix it for good.
http://www.slickit.ca/2009/06/change-drive-letter-of-system-boot.html

I have Paragon Partition Manager 9.5 here and it allows changing the
drive letter for a given partition. Reading the manual doesn't say
anything about if it is a boot/system partition at all.

I have many systems that I use alone with tons of TB of free space with
spare hard drives that I am willing to experiment with. And I have no
problem with experimenting with these methods to see if they actually
work. I am still looking for those that claims their method actually
works (besides this one IT guy).

The method described here in the 2 above links is for restoring the
original drive letter. The original drive letter is considered by
Windows to be the drive designation given to the system at the time of
install. As such since Windows was installed on the 'D:' drive, changing
it to the 'C:' drive will make the system unstable (if not unbootable).

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

 

[BillW50]

C.Joseph Drayton wrote on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:35:26 -0700:

The method described here in the 2 above links is for restoring the
original drive letter. The original drive letter is considered by
Windows to be the drive designation given to the system at the time of
install. As such since Windows was installed on the 'D:' drive, changing
it to the 'C:' drive will make the system unstable (if not unbootable).

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services

Web site: http://csdcs.site90.net/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)90.net

Yes I know. But that IT guy feels that other IT guys screwed up. I hate
to tell him and the others that they all don't usually know what they
are talking about anyway. At least the other IT guys didn't screw up a
working system like what this IT guy does anyway.

 

[joe]

I don't recall seeing any other options than complete format and quick
format and I chose complete. What you say makes plenty of sense so maybe I
pressed enter without reading the options fully?

One thing I didn't mention was what went wrong initially and now it looks
like it may be very relevent. I had attempted to ghost the operating system
drive and it went horribly wrong. Could not get into Windows or Ghost so
finally did the re-install. Does this change the situation ?

Sorry for not mentioning it earlier.

 

[John Doue]

C.Joseph Drayton wrote on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:35:26 -0700:

Yes I know. But that IT guy feels that other IT guys screwed up. I hate
to tell him and the others that they all don't usually know what they
are talking about anyway. At least the other IT guys didn't screw up a
working system like what this IT guy does anyway.

Bill,

It would be nice to be able to reproduce the situation and then try to
correct it. Just for the fun. But in the OP's case, you are dealing -
AFAIK - with a machine where Windows has just be reinstalled, and an
operator who - no offense meant - seams to have little expertise.

In his situation, making sure the disk is clean - which requires a
partitioning program since reformating does not do any thing beyond
reformating a given partition and not the whole disk - and reinstalling
Windows from scratch on an unformatted disk is probably the easiest
solution for him.

Of course, like you, I would be curious to experiment other ways ... but
if, indeed, the registry is full of d: references as the boot drive (and
I have no reason to doubt Pegasus expertise!), it is hard to imagine a
safe way to correct the situation).

 

[John Doue]

I don't recall seeing any other options than complete format and quick
format and I chose complete. What you say makes plenty of sense so maybe I
pressed enter without reading the options fully?

One thing I didn't mention was what went wrong initially and now it looks
like it may be very relevent. I had attempted to ghost the operating system
drive and it went horribly wrong. Could not get into Windows or Ghost so
finally did the re-install. Does this change the situation ?

Sorry for not mentioning it earlier.

snip

I might explain the present situation, but as far as curing it, probably
makes no difference. What I think it, you reinstalled windows without
knowing exactly in what condition was your hard disk. It most certainly
had partitions left on it, and one marked as active.

The thing is, when people mention "formating" they tend to forget that
regular formating just formats one given partition, it does not remove
all existing partitions from the disk. Doing the latter requires
specific programs or running fdisk from a DOS diskette and eliminating
partitions there (of course, there most certainly are other ways, but I
am a DOS guy and it saved my bacon more than once).

This is why I strongly advise you to get hold a partitioning program and
to tell us what you find before you decide on a course of action.

 

[joe]

Thanks John and all the "wise guys" that contributed to this and I mean that
in the humblest of ways.
My problem was that the second partition contained all my data from years
past. I do make backups but they are never completely up to date ( are they
ever ? ) so there was no way I could reformat or repartition the whole
disk without losing some data. I still think my safest option is to leave
well enough alone. If anybody could come up with a solution I would be very
greatfull.
Otherwise thanks all you guys for even bothering to look at my problem.

Joe