I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C: and 2 CD drives assigned D: and E:. Is it possible to reassign the boot drive to C:? The Disk Administrator will not allow for the change of the system/boot drive letter. I will be formatting and reinstalling XP Pro within hours and hoped for another option due the number of applications requiring a C: drive for proper functioning.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

You can use the Disk Management tool under Computer Management. I dunno how to get to it directly, maybe you can help? I got to it by going to help, select Disk Management and then right-select the drive and you can change drive letters (as long as it's not being used already) I have a similar situation where my CD drive letter is D: instead of E: since I want my back up drive to be D:. I think you may need to unplug the data cable of the ZIP drive first, then reassign your hard drive, turn the computer off and plug the ZIP back in and hopefully that'll work. I haven't tried this myself but hopefully it works...


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 6:41 am, Dan wrote:
>I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the
>system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C:
>and 2 CD drives assigned D: and E:. Is it possible to reassign the boot drive to
>C:? The Disk Administrator will not allow for the change of the system/boot drive
>letter. I will be formatting and reinstalling XP Pro within hours and hoped for
>another option due the number of applications requiring a C: drive for proper functioning.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Partition magic has a utility that corrects any references in the registry that get broken as a result of you changing drive letters.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

It is possible that the mixup can be corrected by unplugging your zip drive, reformat and reinstall, and then reinstall the zip drive. This should, in effect, make the boot drive C:, and place the zip drive at the other end of the alphabet. You can then change all of the drive letters(except the boot drive) to whatever you want.


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 9:41 am, Colin Watters wrote:
>
>Partition magic has a utility that corrects any references in the registry that get
>broken as a result of you changing drive letters.
>
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Once, I brought home work from school. I burned my folder onto a CD. For that stuff to work, I needed it to be in the U: drive. I was easily able to change the E: drive (a CD) to the U: with the system config tool. It worked perfectly.


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 6:41 am, Dan wrote:
>I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the
>system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C:
>and 2 CD drives assigned D: and E:. Is it possible to reassign the boot drive to
>C:? The Disk Administrator will not allow for the change of the system/boot drive
>letter. I will be formatting and reinstalling XP Pro within hours and hoped for
>another option due the number of applications requiring a C: drive for proper functioning.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Right click on the My Computer icon, select "Manage", then "Disk Management" under "Storage", right click on the device from the list on the bottom right, and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths...".


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 7:05 am, Danny wrote:
>You can use the Disk Management tool under Computer Management. I dunno how to get to it directly, maybe you can help?

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Everyone that replied to this post is a moron. DISK MANAGER WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO CHANGE THE DRIVE LETTER ASSIGNED TO THE BOOT PARTITION. If it were that easy he would not have posted his question here. I feel this entire stupid site has failed us BOTH. Windows XP installed on my machine choose to use drive letter F. Disk management in MMC WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO BE CHANGED. HELLO PEOPLE DO NOT REPLY TO A POST UNLESS YOU TRY IT YOURSELF OR STOP AND READ FIRST!


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 6:41 am, Dan wrote:
>I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the
>system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C:
>and 2 CD drives assigned D: and E:. Is it possible to reassign the boot drive to
>C:? The Disk Administrator will not allow for the change of the system/boot drive
>letter. I will be formatting and reinstalling XP Pro within hours and hoped for
>another option due the number of applications requiring a C: drive for proper functioning.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188 Here people.. Just got annoyed myself. Found this link on a western digital site


On Saturday, November 9, 2002 at 8:13 am, Roach wrote:
>Everyone that replied to this post is a moron. DISK MANAGER WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO
>CHANGE THE DRIVE LETTER ASSIGNED TO THE BOOT PARTITION. If it were that easy he
>would not have posted his question here. I feel this entire stupid site has failed
>us BOTH. Windows XP installed on my machine choose to use drive letter F. Disk
>management in MMC WILL NOT ALLOW THIS TO BE CHANGED. HELLO PEOPLE DO NOT REPLY TO
>A POST UNLESS YOU TRY IT YOURSELF OR STOP AND READ FIRST!
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

UH DON'T DO THIS. I just had to learn how to restore the registry from dos. KEERIPES. I was unable to load xp after changing this key. I may go through more of the registry for key changes and see if this works.. Anyway.. your old registrys are in windows\repair if you have backed them up. God help you if you're NTFS file system without another XP or linux machine.


On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 3:15 pm, sacha wrote:
>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188
>
>Here people.. Just got annoyed myself.
>Found this link on a western digital site
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024 this link by annoyances.org shows you how to change it in windows and in your registry.. the windows drive change most likely wont work because of it being the one that gets you into windows. kinda scary changing registry ... soo make sure you listen to the link and backup your registry. i am currently also trying to change my drive letter to c:.. having big problems... if i find out how to do it... ill let you kno


On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 9:37 pm, sacha wrote:
>UH DON'T DO THIS.
>I just had to learn how to restore the registry from
>dos.
>KEERIPES.
>I was unable to load xp after changing this key.
>I may go through more of the registry for key changes and see if this works..
>Anyway.. your old registrys are in windows\repair
>if you have backed them up.
>God help you if you're NTFS file system without another XP or linux machine.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

This is more of a workaround, but if your boot drive is now F: or E: and many of your registry paths point to the old "C:" drive. you can update your regisrty with the replace option on a program called Registry crawler. I cloned a defective drive and replaced it with a new 80GB drive, but XP made the boot drive F: all my programs didn't work. I was manually chaning the registry but it has 4000 references to c:\. this program made the changes in about 10 minutes. Now everything is working fine including those progs that were looking for the c: drive whihc is now gone. Hope this helps


On Thursday, January 9, 2003 at 7:46 pm, brian wrote:
>http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024
>this link by annoyances.org shows you how to change it in windows and in your registry..
>the windows drive change most likely wont work because of it being the one that gets
>you into windows.
>kinda scary changing registry ... soo make sure you listen to the link and backup
>your registry.
>
>i am currently also trying to change my drive letter to c:.. having big problems...
>if i find out how to do it... ill let you kno

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

1st, I am running XP with 3 NTFS Partitions.  Yes, my System partition was renamed 
(to I:, and therefore I had many apps misbehaving.)

Sacha, THANK YOU for the missing piece of the puzzle!!!!

Here's the workaround.  (I just tested it successfully and I am back to C: for the 
system partition.

Step 1:  Make the regiustry changes as specified in the KB article, and exit regedit.

Step 2:  ***BEFORE YOU REBOOT*** run XP setup.  Select "upgrade", and walk through 
the steps.  When the system reboots, it starts in setup mode.  Go ahead and let the 
setup run through completion (57 minutes in my case), and when you are done, you 
will have your system back, configured properly.  True, you'll need to reapply service 
pack 1a and any hotfixes, and change any drivers that you do not want to be MS drivers 
(in my case I prefer the Promise controller drivers to Microsoft's), but you will 
be back in business.

FWIW, I was at the Windows Server 2003 Launch today and talked to MS reps who were 
supposedly XP gurus, and one said he remembered a KB article, but not anything about 
it.  I had to reason this out myself, and, happily, my resoning was not faulty.

:-) :-) :-)






On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 9:37 pm, sacha wrote:
>UH DON'T DO THIS. 
>I just had to learn how to restore the registry from
>dos.
>KEERIPES.
>I was unable to load xp after changing this key.
>I may go through more of the registry for key changes and see if this works..
>Anyway.. your old registrys are in windows\repair
>if you have backed them up.
>God help you if you're NTFS file system without another XP or linux machine.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I meant to rename the previous response with this subject but forgot.  This message 
is just here to point you to my previous post  (http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/r1051759991)






On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 9:37 pm, sacha wrote:
>UH DON'T DO THIS. 
>I just had to learn how to restore the registry from
>dos.
>KEERIPES.
>I was unable to load xp after changing this key.
>I may go through more of the registry for key changes and see if this works..
>Anyway.. your old registrys are in windows\repair
>if you have backed them up.
>God help you if you're NTFS file system without another XP or linux machine.
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I have had a similar problem with a 2000 system and the solution I found was to use an old 98 boot disk and run "fdisk /mbr". From what I understand is this wipes out the boot record then when on boot up the drives are reassigned. I do not konw it this will work on XP but my guess is that it will.


On Thursday, August 15, 2002 at 6:41 am, Dan wrote:
>I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the
>system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C:
>and 2 CD drives assigned D: and E:. Is it possible to reassign the boot drive to
>C:? The Disk Administrator will not allow for the change of the system/boot drive
>letter. I will be formatting and reinstalling XP Pro within hours and hoped for
>another option due the number of applications requiring a C: drive for proper functioning.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Here's an easy way fellas.. if you have an extra HD, image your drive over to another drive, remove your zip and make your primary the only IDE device other then cdroms. format your drive and then image the drive back over to your hd.. plug in zip and all worked fine for me. Otherwise, nothing else will work


On Thursday, December 18, 2003 at 9:54 am, LashiCD wrote:
>I have had a similar problem with a 2000 system and the solution I found was to use
>an old 98 boot disk and run "fdisk /mbr". From what I understand is this wipes out
>the boot record then when on boot up the drives are reassigned. I do not konw it
>this will work on XP but my guess is that it will.
>
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Okay.... I just figured out how to clone a boot drive and then change its drive letter and have everything still work. Here is what I did. I had a 30 gig that was my boot drive with xp on it, I cloned it to a 160 gig with Norton Ghost 9 but it gave it the boot letter D: after cloning it windows xp would not boot from it. Then i ran windows setup and looked like I was going to run setup, hit f8 to accept then hit r to repair, after repair, I booted fine, but was boot drive D: instead of C: which is what it needs to be for all the applications and some windows stuff to work. So I use partition magic 8 and changed the boot drive letter and then restared. xp didnt like that so I ran the setup again and repaired it the same way and it is working wonderfully . wish someone would have helped me.


On Monday, January 26, 2004 at 11:30 pm, JamesH wrote:
>Here's an easy way fellas.. if you have an extra HD, image your drive over to another
>drive, remove your zip and make your primary the only IDE device other then cdroms.
> format your drive and then image the drive back over to your hd.. plug in zip and
>all worked fine for me. Otherwise, nothing else will work
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I had this problem with a PC, the system drive becoming drive F: after a System Restore problem. This solution worked a charm, providing me with a running system in an hour or so. I was able to change the Windows system drive from f: to c: without reformatting and reinstalling. Sacha, THANK YOU for the missing piece of the puzzle from me as well. Thanks Pete for posting the full solution.


On Wednesday, April 30, 2003 at 8:33 pm, Pete wrote:
>
>1st, I am running XP with 3 NTFS Partitions. Yes, my System partition was renamed
>(to I:, and therefore I had many apps misbehaving.)
>
>Sacha, THANK YOU for the missing piece of the puzzle!!!!
>
>Here's the workaround. (I just tested it successfully and I am back to C: for the
>system partition.
>
>Step 1: Make the regiustry changes as specified in the KB article, and exit regedit.
>
>Step 2: ***BEFORE YOU REBOOT*** run XP setup. Select "upgrade", and walk through
>the steps. When the system reboots, it starts in setup mode. Go ahead and let the
>setup run through completion (57 minutes in my case), and when you are done, you
>will have your system back, configured properly. True, you'll need to reapply service
>pack 1a and any hotfixes, and change any drivers that you do not want to be MS drivers
>(in my case I prefer the Promise controller drivers to Microsoft's), but you will
>be back in business.
>
>FWIW, I was at the Windows Server 2003 Launch today and talked to MS reps who were
>supposedly XP gurus, and one said he remembered a KB article, but not anything about
>it. I had to reason this out myself, and, happily, my resoning was not faulty.
>
>:-) :-) :-)
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

This Q article worked great for me, although I didn't have to set any permissoins. I was able to get into the registry remotely on the network (which was still working) even though I couldn't log in. I just hit F2 and renamed it. After the reboot I combed through and changed a few references to the old I:\ drive to clean up.


On Tuesday, November 19, 2002 at 3:15 pm, sacha wrote:
>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188
>
>Here people.. Just got annoyed myself.
>Found this link on a western digital site
>
>

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

I had a similar situation when I bought a pc online that had no operating system. The hard drive was designated as I: ,after installing win xp ... very annoying. After reading the warnings at MS support against changing the boot drive letter to something different from when win xp was installed, I decided to delete the partition and re-install win XP. It works. Go into BIOS setup, change to boot from CD drive before hard drive, insert win XP installation disk, save and exit. Press any key to boot from cd when prompted. Install fresh copy of operating system not repair. Delete the partition the system is on and a new partition is made. Format this partition, quick( no bad sectors check ) or regular format (checks for bad sectors ). All data files, applications, and drivers will be deleted, so save the drivers to removable media.
>I have an XP Pro machine that a Dell technician assigned the drive letter F: to the
>system/boot partition. This happened because of a ZIP drive that was assigned C:......etc..

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