No C: drive?

E

Elec

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2000
Messages
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Having a weird problem with my hard drives. I installed a new 250 gig HDD and had to do the usual of letting windows create and install on a 137 gig partition, then installing SP1, then partitioning the additional 100 gigs of space. Anyway, for whatever reason, my new system partition on the 250 gig drive has been assigned the letter H. Everything else is fine and I have several other partitions and drives, currently labelled D, E, F, and G. I was under the impression that a C: drive was mandatory, but drive management won't let me change the letter because it's the system partition. Any way I can get it to recognize that partition as C instead of H? That particular drive is on primary master. Not a huge deal, but I'd just as soon have it called C :)
 
Guess I'm stuck with H: then? It's not a huge deal I guess, and I can probably reinstall to that partition if I really need to, I don't have a ton of stuff installed yet anyway after my initial partition/format. Anybody know offhand whether this drive letter problem could be corrected by doing a repair install of XP Pro? That seems to me like it'd be less painful than a complete reformat/reinstall of the partition, but I'm not sure if it'd work.
 
goto diskmgmt.msc and right click on the drive. then select change drive letters and path. that should be it. GL
 
It's the system partition, so it won't let me change the drive letter that way :(

Thanks for the suggestion though!
 
I know what you mean, I installed a 250max sata along with my 160 and 120 eide, and reinstalled win on that sata drive, but for some reason, its set as F: and the other two drives are the normal c: and d: I just learned to live with it, its not like its a huge issue as it defaults to f: regardless when I goto install apps and such, so it doesnt try to goto c: thank goodness lol. I dont feel like reinstalling as about 80gb of anime is on it and I dont feel like pushing it to the other drive. lol, i kinda wish it was set as the c: but nothing I can do can change it and everything works as it would have.
 
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;223188


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=326683

Not really a fix on the above one, but the first one might help.

When I've had this happen, I make sure to only install windows with the system drive and the CD-ROM attached only. This rules out Windows thinking that other IDE devices are drives and assigning them letters beforehand. Once windows is installed, then hook them up and assign letters till your hearts content.

Enjoy.
 
Gave the registry letter change thing a shot cause it looked easy enough. Unfortunately, after I changed my system drive/partition to C: that way, it hung while booting into Windows. It was kind of strange because it started booting Windows just fine but then appeared to hang without actually freezing - was probably looking for the system files and unable to find them. Oh well, format/reinstall fixed my problem and also allowed me to make a small system partition (15 gigs) and a large data partition (the rest, 220 gigs or something) like I had originally wanted. Was a bit of a PITA because of stupid Windows product activation - it wouldn't let me activate online because I had just installed/activated a week or two ago when I got the drive, so I had to call up phone support, which I'm fairly sure was in India. Big sigh.

Now that I think about it, I probably had another drive plugged in with a Windows install on it at the time I tried to install to the new drive. That's probably what screwed up the drive letters. So a warning to others: bootable system drives unplugged while you're putting an OS on a new drive! :)
 
Thanks for the update. It's nice to know if you're giving good advice or just full of shit half the time.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't use that registry-based drive letter change for a system drive, after my experience. It might be ok for just reassigning data drives that you're not trying to boot off of. I knew it seemed too easy :D
 
thats sounds really messed up for a windows xp installion, i dont see how it could happen, unless you installed it on there then took the HD out
 
I think I had my old HDD hooked up when I tried to install Windows on the new one. I imagine what happened then is setup saw the install on the old drive first, called it C:, named all the other drives after that, and then gave itself the next unused letter, which happened to be H. Then once booting off the new install, H: was the system partition so it wouldn't let me change the letter. I was surprised though that there was NO C: drive whatsoever at that point. I didn't think such a thing was possible but it happened.
 
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