Changing Root Drive Letter?

[m3avrck]

So I just installed a new harddrive and reinstalled WinXP. However, as I was installing it, I had my flash card reader installed and now my drive letters are screwed up.

My main drive is H: and my partition is I: and the flash drives are C-F:. I was looking online for a way to change H: to C: since the Disk Management admin tool won't let you do this.

I found one solution here: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=108

However, I'm not sure if this work since I have other programs installed. Can anyone comment on if this method works or if there is a way to change my root drive letter? Thanks!

 

[stevewm]

The method you linked will indeed change the root drive letter. However ANYTHING already installed that refers to files by a specific path will break since they are looking for H:

The best way to change the root letter is to reinstall with everything but your hardrive disconnected. If you attempt to do otherwise your system might become so messed up a reinstall may need to be done anyways.


Why not just live with it? Applications dont care what drive letter they are installed on. Properly coded installers or scripts should automatically reference the right drive.

 

[greyghost]

I feel for you bud - I am a bit anal about that myself
My IC7-G recognizes IDE's before SATA ands that screwed me up big time - it was worth the reinstall for me

 

[m3avrck]

yeah i think i'm just gonna live with it for now. planning on buying a new computer later this year and this one will be scrapped so having h:\ as my main drive isn't that bad and definetly not reinstalling stuff again, such a pain. haha. thanks though.

 

[foreignkid]

In win2k/xp, you can "map network drive" to get the main drive to C. I've encountered this a little bit at work in situations like this. Map the drive to //127.0.0.1/h$ . Reconnect at logon is good with this.

Its worth noting that both C and H will be the same drives and will both show up.

 

[STL]

What? Why'd you put your boot drive as H?

Did it get accidentally set there? Then why do you say Disk Mgmt won't let you set it back?

If you're experiencing the problem I /think/ you're experiencing, then you need to play musical chairs. Get whatever crud that's currently called C out of the way - Q or something. Reboot, then rename H to C.

My drives currently go CDE GH because I didn't bother to reset my opticals the last time I played musical drives.

 

[stevewm]

In 2k/XP drive letters are sticky. Once they are assigned they do not change unless you change them yourself. The boot volume cannot be changed unless you want to do a little registry work.

However changing the boot volume letter after you have already installed some applications, drivers, etc... will usually break them. A lot of apps out there still refer to stuff by a specific path instead of the correct %systemroot% varible like they should

Windows references everything by these varibles which is why changing the drive letter will not effect windows itself, only the applications.

 

[Ice Czar]

simple
disconnect all your HDDs and other storage devices
make the HDD containing the OS (and specifically the system partition with the ntldr & boot,ini) the Master HDD on the Primary IDE channel
and boot into it
windows will assign it C:/
then start attaching your other drives

for a PATA\IDE recognition order by both the BIOS (primaries) and OS its generally

-- Primary Master primary partition
-- Primary Slave primary partition
-- Secondary Master primary partition
-- Secondary Slave primary partition
-- Primary Master extended partition with logical drives
-- Primary Slave extended partition with logical drives
-- Secondary Master extended partition with logical drives
-- Secondary Slave extended partition with logical drives
-- Removable media (CD-ROM) or other software driven devices with drive letters

(of course that doesnt address the fact your allowed 4 Primary or 3 primary and One Extended Partition per HDD )

How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters

BASIC Disk - Drive Letter Assignment Rules

The following are the basic disk drive letter assignment rules for Windows 2000:

Scan all fixed hard disks as they are enumerated(^ above), assign drive letters starting with any active primary partitions (if there is one), otherwise, scan the first primary partition on each drive. Assign next available letter starting with C:

Repeat scan for all fixed hard disks and removable (JAZ, MO) disks and assign drive letters to all logical drives in an extended partition, or the removable disk(s) as enumerated. Assign next available letter starting with C:.

Finally, repeat scan for all fixed hard disk drives, and assign drive letters to all remaining primary partitions. Assign next available letter starting with C:.

Floppy drives. Assign letter starting with A:

CD-ROM drives. Assign next available letter starting with D:.

Inside the Boot Process Part 1 (NTFS) & Part 2 @ Windows & .NET Magazine

Definition of System and Boot Partition

System Partition
The system partition refers to the disk volume containing hardware specific files needed to boot Windows (NTLDR, BOOT.INI, and so on). On Intel x86-based machines, it must be a primary partition that has been marked active. On x86 machines, this is always drive 0, the drive the system BIOS searches during system boot for the operating system.

Boot Partition
The boot partition contains the Windows operating system files (usually \WINNT) and it support files (usually \WINNT\SYSTEM32). It can be the same partition as the system partition.

but what Im guessing happened is that you left a partition with the ntldr on it when you did the reinstall? in which case when you remove that HDD, your new "install" wont work.

Boot into the OS now, and
Start > Run > (type) diskmgmt.msc > and tell me the physical config and which partition is marked system

 

[theTIK]

The first time this happened to me I cared, now I just don't give a shit, there is really no advantage to having your main drive as C.

 

[RandysWay]

Originally posted by theTIK
The first time this happened to me I cared, now I just don't give a shit, there is really no advantage to having your main drive as C.

Except the point of most people being "used to" the main drive letter as C:\.