What Happens To Drive Letters When You Dual Boot ?
Jun 14, 2009
1. My machine has XP on a single hard drive w/ 3 partitions. In order to try Windows 7 the easiest thing for me to do is to install it on my E: partition. If I boot into Windows 7, do the drive letters change around or do the Windows 7 system files still show up as E:WINDOWS?
Are there any downsides to this installation that I don't know about? If I got tired of Windows 7 would it be a problem to get rid of the bootloader?
2. My original plan was to buy a second hard drive, install it by itself, and load Windows 7 onto it. Then reconnect the original hard drive and dual boot by changing the boot order in the BIOS. What does this do to the drive letters?
I would have one hard drive with 3 partitions and another hard drive with one partition. If I boot Windows 7 I'm guessing that its hard drive would become C: and the other hard drive would become D:, E: and F:. But what happens if I boot XP from the other hard drive? Does it stay C:, D: and E: and the second hard drive becomes F:, or do the letter scramble differently?
Well, I did a dual-boot system with Vista 32-bit and 7 64-bit. Now the problem is that, when I'm in Vista, the drive letter of Vista would be C: and 7 would be in B:.
But when I'm in 7, its partition would have the letter C: while Vista would have B:.
Is this normal? What would happen if I installed a program on the path C: in Windows 7?
1) I currently am running Vista on a laptop on which it is the only OS. I want to install 7 on a second partition for dual boot. However, to keep things tidy, I would like to make Windows 7 Drive C: (which currently contains Vista). Is there a way to image the hard drive then reload it onto drive D: after I install 7 on C:?
2) I guess my other option is to install 7 on the formatted HD, then create a D: partition to run the Vista recovery disks on at least that would restore my drivers, etc. But I really wanted to keep my current configuration around for those programs that are slow to catch on to the new OS. (Or do I even have to worry about this?)
3) If all this dual boot stuff is too complicated or if I really don't need to worry about the driver/software compatibility, I might just do away with that idea and clean install it on the C: drive and forget about Vista. (reluctant to do so since I rely on this computer for school). I will be keeping my C: drive image that I took yesterday so taht I can recover to Vista if need be.
Edt: 4) I just had anther thought. If I install Win 7 clean could I then take my Vista hard drive image and make it into a VHD? that would pretty much solve all my troubles I think. Unless I would need to reinstall Vista onto the VHD.
FIX (with SavePart, tried other partition utilities and editing MountedDevices to no avail)
Hope this helps someone else with Wrong Drive Letter Problems
Installed Windows 7 RC and all was well with XP Dual Boot.
After some experimenting(BSD,LINUX,etc), Windows 7 would not boot, so popped in the DVD and let Windows 7 repair the boot.
Windows 7 now booted, but when booting XP on E: , it was now assigned the wrong Drive letter D: and would boot to just before the Logon Prompt and hang(same in safe mode.)
After much research and trial (including editing the HKLM/SYSTEM/MountedDevices hive of the XP install from within Windows 7 to change the drive letter) this was the fix.
This particular XP boots from Partition/Drive E: in Windows.0 directory (yeah, i know, been this way for years)
As currently configured, XP is on drive C:, Win 7 was added to drive E:, and the system is currently run as a dual boot. Attempting to boot without the XP drive present will yield a "NTLDR is missing" error very early in the boot process.
I have already tried the following:
(1) I moved the hidden Windows Boot Manager files (bootmgr as well as the associated Boot folder) from the XP drive root to the Win 7 drive root.
(2) After physically removing the XP drive, I rebooted to the Win 7 installation DVD, and used the "Repair Your Computer" option to pull up the "Recovery Tools". Then, using the command prompt utility, ...
(3) I attempted to write a new boot sector to the Windows 7 disk using the command: Bootrec /fixboot, - that yields an error though. The Bootrec /fixmbr claimed success, but ultimately did not make Win 7 drive bootable.
I had to reconnect drive C: just to boot into Win 7 again to write this. I do have files backed up, but to format and reinstall files would take many hours beyond just the time to transfer 400 GB of data, since I have dozens of purchased applications that need to be freshly reinstalled and validated as well. Basically I want my E: drive now to be my boot drive while the C: drive is reformatted and used for general storage.
Any idea how to make my Win 7 drive bootable? Do I need a partition program that is more adept at creating a viable boot sector, or is that even the problem?
i have a new work laptop with xp sp3 on it. I want to install w7 64 bit as a dual boot, but only have 1 physical drive. i cannot remove my current installation as it is pre-build from work, but can partition the drive etc. However on trying to install w7 64 bit I get a message saying cannot install windows 7 on efi drive with mbr, not gpt. Can I do what I want without screwing up my xp installation?
I have Win XP 32 bit on my old drive. I buy Win 7 full retail and a new HD. I set bios to boot from cd etc. Win 7 starts up. It shows the 2 drives, so I select new drive...no problems. It starts install. I leave it to do its stuff.When I come back its up and all ok.I dint get any option to boot from XP. The drive was listed as "SYSTEM" but not old Windows or anything.
Also ASUS chipset drivers dont work and they were listed as 7 drivers.I tried Vista drivers but it normally shuts down and restarts. Nothing.
ok so im having a weird problem thats probably very easy to fix.
background info: before my Windows 7 install i had 3 partitions
vista 64
xp 32
empty (soon to be linux)
when i downloaded the newest win 7 build i deleted my xp 32 partition and installed Windows 7 on that partition. because Windows 7 creates that "reserve partition" or what ever, it extended my EMPTY partition with my vista partion. which cause it to become a "logical drive" rather than a "boot" drive. aka i cannot figure out how to access my vista OS.. rather annoying since im just toying with Windows 7 atm.
I've got a bit of a perplexing problem here that I hope somebody can provide some insight on. Set up the dual boot with your (very awesome) tutorial and everything works perfectly there. Windows 7 was installed first to the C: drive, XP is on an E: partition of the same drive. The D: drive is a second physical drive that is just used for file storage. If it matters, both physical drives are paired drives in Raid1.
The problem comes when I've loaded into Windows XP, I can't access the D: storage drive. It reads as size 0, and can't be formatted or read.
Under Windows 7, everything works. I can access the storage drive fine and have no problems using it.
I originally thought it was a permissions thing because the D: drive was formatted in Windows 7, but in XP I can read from the Windows 7 C: drive just fine.
I am at a loss, can anybody offer any suggestions as to why the drive would read fine under 7 but not when in XP?
I installed windows 7 on my desktop where XP was already installed. Now, unless I have the RC1 DVD in the drive, the computer automatically boots to XP with no option. If I leave the DVD in the drive it gives me the ''press any key to boot from CD or DVD" then automatically goes to Windows 7 if I dont press anything. I used BCD while in 7 and it didn't seem to have an effect.
I currently have a system running XP with two IDE hard drives and 3 partitions.
I have taken Windows 7 as a chance to get myself some much needed extra space! and purchased a new 1tb SATA drive.
I really dont want to lose the exisitng data I have so my original plan was to take my main IDE harddrive with most of my data stick it in an external USB carrier and then start fresh in the system with the 1tb and Windows 7.
What would be cooler would be if I could add the 1tb to the exisiting system and install Windows 7 on that (ideally with that as C and either then have much quicker access to transfer data to the new drive or even dual boot with XP at first incase I have any issues with Windows 7. Can anyone advice me on how easy/risky this is? And what they would suggest to someone trying to maximise the uptime of their PC?
I've just got a new HP laptop with windows 7 Home Premium.
Anytime Upgraded to Ultimate.
i want to boot to windows XP (SP2) on this new laptop..(Not necessarily Dual-Boot). there is only on program i need to use under XP.
the dual-booting tutorials here are quite in depth and potentially problematic for none techie like me. i would prefer not re-partion the drive and 'hide' one operating system from the other, so what i would prefer to do is this...
1. Plug in an External hard drive (USB 2.0).Clean and factory formatted.
2. Go into my BIOS > Disable boot from internal hard drive > enable boot from CD Drive (first)
3. Exit BIOS having saved changes
4. insert win XP Install disk in drive.
So, in theory XP Install should be like on a brand new machine.
when i want to use windows 7 i would reverse the BIOS changes and make sure external drive with XP is not connected.
So, windows 7 would not know XP is even in use.
Is all this viable... or is there something that would prevent it from working?
I have a simple xp 32 computer and would like to dual boot (from a partition) with windows 7. my problem seems to lie in whether i have enable my usb to be bootable as a dvd install of windows 7. it seems very complicated, and i am interested in figuring out whether it was possible to simply create the partition (with gpart) than in windows mount windows 7 and when it asks where it wants to be installed, I would than chose my new partition.
I don't know... (don't want to screw up) I hope this makes sense...
I really would like to try widows 7, and any help would be very much appreciated .
I have a Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. Some of my older applications do not support this platform. My processor does not support Window Virtual PC and Windows XP mode so I was hoping to add XP as a dual boot. Is it possible to boot XP from an external harddrive or USB instead of having to partition the internal hard drive. Or do you have any suggestions on how I can load XP after Windows 7 is already loaded.
I ve managed to install Win XP after Windows 7 installation as in tutorial. Win 7 is on Drive C and Win XP on drive G. Then Ive decided to only keep the XP version and move it on drive C (currently occuied by Win 7).
I have a Sony C series 64 bit laptop. I have a 2.5" IDE drive from my old laptop which has XP.
I was thinking to image Win 7 on my Sony to a cd; so that I have a clean disk. How can I then clone my XP ide drive onto the new laptop drive - which is an Hitachi ATA (mSata?) - so that I will have a dual boot system? Although if the XP works fine, that is what I will use.
I do a sysprep 1st, then use Bart PE. However I believe Bart PE only goes to XP SP3, and I only have the whole drive - with all my docs on it. No installation disk.
Do I need to do a "sysprep"? Is it possible to "slipstream" a whole drive with all the necessary drivers? Will it be an issue if the XP is 32 bit, and my new machine is 64bit?
In 7 everything is all right.7 is c: and the boot partition is hidden.
But in XP the hidden partition is c: and visible.XP is d:,so some programs use default dir can't work.I tried disk management to change xp to c: but didn't succeed.
Anyway to change the drive letters and hide the 100m partition?
I have installed XP in C (first) and Windows 7 in D. Everything works fine. When I use Windows 7 I can see and access to drive C (XP) but when using XP I cannot see and access to drive D (Windows 7). What can I do to?
My goal is to run a Windows 7/Windows 7 dual boot system with one installation for day to day operations (MAIN) and then second installation strictly for gaming (GAMER).
I have successfully installed Windows 7 twice. During clean install i created 30GB partition (C: ) and put MAIN there. No problems. I loaded that up and from within Disk Management created a second partition on the same physical drive and named it (D: ).
I booted from the Windows 7 install DVD and then installed GAMER to the (D: ) partition. No problems. I am able to boot into each installation (MAIN and GAMER) from the boot manager without any troubles.
When I boot into the MAIN installation, the system path/partition is (C: ) and the os files for the second installation, GAMER, can be seen on (D: ) just fine.
However, when i boot into the GAMER installation, its system path is also (C: ) and the partition for MAIN somehow got renamed to (G: )
I would like it so that when I boot into MAIN (which was installed to C: ), that partition stays named (C: ) and when i boot into GAMER (which was installed to D: ), that partition stays named (D: ). Eventhough both installations see themselves as (C: ) when i boot into them, it does not seem to cause any problems.
So how should I do my second Windows 7 installation to a partition named (D: ) and force it to keep that name when i boot into it?
I am running XP on a SATA HDD. I have installed Win 7 on a second partition with some problems. The main problem was random BSOD's. This I believe, I have traced back to the fact that the MoBo runs Nvidia chips. Have downloaded the updated Nvidia Win 7 chip drivers. So, I uninstalled Win 7 and removed boot loader via BCDEDIT.
What I would now like to try is to install Win 7 on a separate IDE HDD connected to the primary IDE controller. This is so I can sort out the Nvidia driver problem.
I can see problems with this. My questions are the following: What will I set the IDE HDD to be, Master or Slave? Then boot off DVD/ROM and then install Win 7 as normal onto IDE HDD. If yes, I take it that the Windows 7 bootloader will not be installed on the XP SATA HDD. If this is the case then I should be able to use EasyBCD to add the XP on the SATA HDD. Most critical part of the whole deal will be to set the SATA HDD (with XP) to boot FIRST. I have been down this track before and the MoBo sets the IDE as Drive 0 (FIRST boot HDD).
I know that there is a simple answer to this. I just cannot see the forest for the trees at present.
I installed windows 7 x64 RC a while back, and it detected windows xp and set up a dual boot. All was well.
I had a PSU failure, and i replaced the PSU. I set the BIOS to boot from the drive with windows 7 on it. It wouldn't boot. I set the bios to boot from the drive with windows Xp on it, and it booted to the dual boot screen.
Apparently, windows 7 placed the boot information on the old XP drive, so if i try to boot to windows 7 from the windows 7 drive, its a no go.
Now, this wouldnt' bug me so much, except that i want to replace the Xp drive with a larger 1tb drive. I don't need XP anymore, and do need storage (xp drive is 160gb). if i remove the XP drive, windows 7 won't boot. How can i fix this?
can I dual boot using an ext. Hard drive. I found an old 250gb phanton hd I've never used. Figured I could throw it in there. Would vista dual boot to that. Or no??
[Solved] Setting up Dual Boot on a flash drive that isn't always plugged in. I have windows 7 Home Premium installed on my desktop but I was hoping for a way to set up an installation of Windows XP on a 16GB flash drive that I have.
Not even thinking I just figured I would give it a try and I booted to my Windows XP disc and installed all of the files to the flash drive. Well needless to say it messed up my MBR and then wouldn't boot to the flash drive or to my internal hard drives anymore.
I was able to fix it by using the Windows 7 disc to repair startup but I still am not able to boot to Windows XP on the flash drive.
Is there any way to do this? I know I need to make some changes to the bootloader but I'm not sure exactly what to do. Is there a way to make it so it will automatically boot Windows 7 unless I put the flash drive in first and prompt it to as the computer starts up?
I have several HDD and one SSD. The SSD was my boot "C" drive and single win 7 OS. The SSD failed so I installed Win 7 on one of the back-up HDD. The install made that drive "C". I replaced the SSD and installed WIn 7 as a second OS on the SSD and it became drive "B". I can boot to either OS install on start-up but regardless of which install I boot with, drive "C" becomes the active system drive, even though the desktops are different (as they shoujld be for the two OS installs). SO, even if I boot from the SSD "B" drive, in windows disk manamgent it indicates that "C" is the "system" and "active" drive while it will indicate that "B" is the "boot" drive.
I want to format drive C so I can change its drive letter and reinstall Win 7 as a single OS to the SSD and make it drive "C", but windows will not let me change drive letters or format the current HDD labeled as "C" - obviously because it considers it the active sytem drive even when I've booted from the "B" SSD.
I have a 300gb harddrive that i shrank by 50gb to make room for a windows 7 rc1 32 bit dual boot. I now need to extend the partition because i have almost filled it up. When i shrink the main partition (the 238gb one) that has vista on it, it won't let me extend the windows 7 partition onto it.
This is what it looks like in diskmgmt.msc
Vista (188gb)/Unallocated space (~50gb)/Windows (50gb)/HP_RECPVERY (9.91gb)
I have set up a dual boot- Windows 7 pro & XP ultimate, both on separate SSD's, all OK. I also have two 3TB HDD's set up under windows 7 RAID, all OK. In XP under drive management the RAID drives show up twice, once as 775GB unused drives with no drive letter allocated and also as 2.7GB RAID drives with status 'failed', drives marked as 'missing'. Is there a way I can get the RAID drive accessible under XP?
I'm using multiple hard drives to install both fedora and Windows 7. I've followed this online tutorial exactly: Dual-booting Fedora 14 and Windows 7 on a computer with 2 hard drives
The problem I seem to be facing is on the "Add a new Entry Step". His secondary OS partition has a drive letter assigned to it and I do not. I've gone into computer management and have tried to assign a drive letter to either of my secondary OS's hard drive partitions and it will not let me.
All I need is the boot loader to link to my second hard drive when the second option (OS) is chosen.
I have windows XP pro 32 bit installed in C drive and then installed clean win 7 64bit in drive D. Everything works properly but when I boot from XP, it is in C drive and I see Windows 7 in D drive, when I boot from Windows 7, I see win 7 in C and winXP in D drive. Is it normal or is there any I can do to fix win Xp in C and Windows 7 in D?
I have just replaced the hard drive on my laptop as the original was starting to fail. I created an image of the windows 7 pro 32bit original drive. I replaced the hard drive and installed a clean 64 bit version of windows. I have also installed a clean 32 bit version as a dual boot. I now want to use the original image of the 32 bit system and install this on the clean 32 bit installation.I have tried this using the image software I have (snapshot) but cannot get it to work.
