Dell :: Change Drive Letter Assigned To (winretools) Partition On Windows 8 Laptop?
Apr 7, 2013
I'm just going through the process of personalizing a new Inspiron 14z with Windows 8. The one thing that has me stumped are all the partitions that ship installed on the drive, due to a combination of everything being different on Win8, Dell doing things their own way, and GPT formatting. Generally I would like to know what the heck all those partitions are for, but it's fine if that will be a slow learning process. Specifically and immediately, I need to change the drive letter assigned to the "WINRETOOLS" partition. Currently it's D:, and the problem is that for 10 years I've been using D: as my data partition, and quite a number of applications, configurations, settings, etc. assume that all my files are on D:. For instance, by having all my music on D:, I can sync iTunes library and preference files between machines, and all ratings and playlists match from one machine to the next. Same thing for my photos. Same thing for a bunch of utilities like FTP consoles, sync utilities...
In a prior version of Windows, I would just go into Disk Management, right click the partition in question, assign a different drive letter, and job done. On my machine, the 2GB WINRETOOL partition doesn't even show as having a drive letter in Disk Management, despite the fact that it's D: in Win Explorer. Additionally, the only right click option is "help". I've taken that option, and, despite its aspirations, it's not useful.
How can I change that drive letter to something else? Should WINRETOOLS even have a drive letter in Explorer (some posts I've seen indicate that it should be hidden)? If I do manage to change the drive letter, will that break its function, whatever that is?
My machine has a 500GB spinning disk, which has all the aforementioned partitions. I've shrunk the C: partition to 80GB, in preparation for creating a data partition. I have not yet formatted the unassigned space as I would like to solve this WINRETOOLS thing first. Finally, there is a 32GB SSD that I've set up as an Intel Smart Response cache, and it's no longer visible to the OS.
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Mar 13, 2013
This morning, my laptop wouldn't boot and I got a message saying I needed to use the recovery disk to fix the problem. A little investigating using the command prompt from that disk revealed my system and data partitions had no drive letter assigned to them. A little work with Diskpart fixed that but left me wondering what would have caused them to disappear.
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Aug 18, 2012
I've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
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Mar 5, 2013
I'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
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Sep 22, 2014
My windows 8 partition is inaccessible. Win 8 won't boot, even after attempted repair and running chkdsk.
This all happened after an automatic update.
I booted to another drive. Windows explorer shows the bad partition letter but no size or contents. Other partitions on the same drive are ok.
I also can see the bad drive contents from a cmd prompt.
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May 16, 2013
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
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Apr 1, 2013
When I put my usb in my pc I see on my Computer a new drive letter H:
So now I have: C: D: E:
Floppy: A: and my DVD as F: and a Removeable disk I: but I don't have a any removeable disk on any usb port in my pc.
When I put now my other usb it's assigining it as drive H:
But I need it to be G: since I need to save to it something from a program I saved before and it must be G: not H:
How can I change/force it to be drive letter G: instead H: ?
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Jul 27, 2014
I tried to change the drive letter because it wont appear, but it didnt work. I have tried the CMD method with the volumes but the volume did not show up. All I know is that its a G-Technology hard drive. I tried formatting it to NTFS but that wont work. Basically I tried everything and nothing works. P.S The drive is Disk1...
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Aug 24, 2014
He has a DELL XPS machine, an i7 newer model running 8.1, he's got a main internal HD as C: and a permanently added USB drive with 3 partitions ad D: E: and F: but on reboot the F: partition suddenly goes up a letter to G:, the other two stay the same.
Apparently its been fine until recently when this started happening, I made sure the used Disk Management to change the letter back but on reboot its back to G:
He has no other devices attached and any other USB drives either have a selected letter near the end of the alphabet or are not assigned a set letter but none are attached when the machine boots. It sounds like the F: is being reserved by something, possibly registry wise but I don't have the machine in front of me to check and I would rather its me using regedit and he's got slippery fingers due to arthritis and is prone to over clicking and wrong key presses.
where to check or what to check, I've done as much as I can via Skype but at a loss as to why its only doing it to one partition and always the same one, also did a dischk and the partiton is ok.
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Jan 11, 2013
Alright, I just installed my Windows 8 Pro from a USB drive as I was installing it I was installing Windows 8 on the W:/ drive but once it was installed I came to found out that that My C:/ drive which was originally Windows 7's drive letter now belongs to Windows 8, and now the drive that is now Windows 7's is D:/ is is possible to change it back a W: drive or something? and yes, Windows 7 is the main partition on the system, I'm not sure why it changed but it's actually the first time this has happened.
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Mar 1, 2013
whenever i connect my samsung 1TB portable Hard drive on a Dell xps 15inch laptop running windows 8 pro, it completely freezes the whole system. i can move the mouse but i cant click anything or go to task manager using ctrl alt delThese are the things i have tried:tried different cablestried different usb portsRemoved usb driversChecked event logs(the laptop crashes when i launch the event logs)Ran CCleaner cleaning registryAll the above did not work. i even tried to roll back to a previous restore point and that did not work either.I tested the hard drive on my brother in law's laptop and it worked fine. it is a acer laptop running fresh copy of windows 7.Is this a windows 7 error? do i have a virus maybe?(i am going to do a full system scan soon)What other things can i try?
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Oct 20, 2013
I have a Dell Inspiron 7720 Win 8 x64 PC which includes UEFI (described in Microsoft link below). However, UEFI is accessed on Win 8 from Settings Charm > "Change PC Settings". This requires that you have booted the system already. In case of a main disk crash, you need to boot from another drive, like a thumb drive.
During restart my Dell PC displays "F12 Boot Options" in lower right of screen during restart, but multiple presses of F12 during startup are ignored. Likewise when I try F1 or F2 during startup. So I have no way to specify an alternate boot drive.
I am thinking maybe my PC is defective, but also maybe I'm missing something. What is UEFI? - Microsoft Windows Support
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Jan 14, 2013
I just recently built a new Windows 8 machine. Since I knew I was going to be getting an SSD down the road, I planned ahead:
Nutshell, the C: drive, the boot drive, is at the end of the partition, sized to 220 DB, so I knew it would be smaller than the 240/256GB drive I knew I'd eventually be getting. The Users folder is on the D: drive, so the C: partition is only the OS and apps. Everything's dandy.
I found EasyBCD and used it to move the boot manager over into the C: partition, so theoretically that's all I need to move over to the new drive. So what I want to do is move the C: partition over to the SSD, have it stay C: once it's there, and then have it boot into that partition. (Note that I cannot disconnect the hard drive when it's time to reboot because that's where the Users folder lives and I don't want to break that.)
I keep running into problems with the "keeping it C" part. When I clone the drive over, the old drive stays as C: (as you would expect), and the new drive gets a new letter. Attempts to change those letters using DISKPART from the Win 8 install DVD have been either futile or disastrous.
I've been using the free version of Macrium as my cloning / imaging tool...is there a better free tool I should be using?
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Jul 23, 2014
When I installed Win8 (at this point, updated to Win8.1 Update) on drive V:, it changed it to C:. Since I'm used to the drive letters as they used to be, I'd like to change it back to V:. I figure I'll have to change all the registry entries for installed programs from C: to V:.
How to confirm that I'll have to manually make those registry changes?
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Mar 12, 2013
I have a windows to go installation in a large external hdd, so I have made a second partition to use as data storage.
Now, when I insert the disk on my "normal" windows installation I would expect the data partition to be available... Instead I have to assign a letter to be able to use it.
The disk appears to be online and once assigned a letter you can unplug it and plug it again without having to do the letter assignment again.
BUT, every time I restart the pc I have to do it all over again.
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Apr 16, 2013
I have an SSD drive with 2 partitions on it. 1st partition has Win 7 on it as drive letter C. 2nd Partition has Win 8 on it as Drive letter W. At 1 point in time if I booted to Win 8 the drive letter would dynamically change from drive letter W to Drive letter C and make Win 7 drive letter W. The revers was true if I booted to Win 7. Something has changed somewhere, where this dynamic drive letter changing is no longer working. When I boot to Win 8 the drive letter remains to be drive letter W & Win 7 is still drive C. This is causing problems when I'm booted to Win 8 with regard to installing & using apps while in Win 8 since the C drive is really the Win 7 system drive.
How can I fix this to get back the dynamic flip flopping of drive C? I confess to being somewhat ignorant when dealing with this particular area of things.
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Jul 23, 2014
That is, I can allocate it one through drive management but it still doesn't show next switch on in My Computer, so I must go in an allocate it one. Otherwise it works fine. Bit tedious after a while.
Do I have to reformat it completely to regain auto allocation of a letter?
Used to be fine, but not now. A USB 3.0 Toshiba 500 gig external drive (sealed unit) doesn't have this problem.
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Nov 14, 2013
After last "patch-tuesday" my Windows 8.1 don't assign drive letters to hotswaped HDD's and USB keys.
When starting my backupdrive (eSATA), it is now without a drive letter, I can give it one though in disk-management, but before last tuesday, it was given a letter automatic. Same problem when I connect an USB-HDD or an USB-stick.
Is there a way to get back "autoassign of a drive letter"? (don't know the correct word for this function in English).
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Jul 17, 2014
i'm using Windows 8 Home 64 Bit.
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to add a NTFS Partition to my USB drive. I want to store large files over 4GB on this partition, while having the rest of my files on the primary partition which is FAT32. The problem is, when I plug my drive into the computer it only shows the primary partition.
Is there any way to get Windows to show both partitions when I plug the device in? I want to be able to store files on both partitions.
After doing some research, I found that one possible way would be to set the USB device as a "Fixed disk". I was unable to figure out how to do this.
The device is a 32GB Silicon Power Blaze Removable Disk with USB 3.0.
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Mar 23, 2014
Is it may orientates how to add permissions for users who log on using the server?
In Windows 7, they were more stricter for example when user want install programs.
Is there a program that such causes can block the installation of programs, or hide the drives on your computer? It can be installed on a server or locally - with indifference.
I heard something about a Microsoft program, which was in the name of "policy", but unfortunately I can not find it.
Another matter. How a computer (model) duplicate to the other 20? For a backup? By the server? I mean, I do not have to install the 19 remaining, but install programs, just as soon as cloned together with all the settings.
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Dec 6, 2013
I am trying to get my external hard drives setup from a freshly rebooted installed computer. I recently placed an external hard drive with all my back up files on my computer, but this drive is not going to be my main drive. I have two others I will be using as a main hdd and a backup drive that are brand new.
So, the question is, if I were to use a utility like the Windows 8.1 disk management feature to either delete the drive letter or even change it to another one, will that mess up the external hard drive or even lose data? Because until I transfer my files to my backup disk I am afraid of losing my only copy of my files.
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Apr 25, 2013
windows 8
how can I activate windows 8 on Dell i5 laptop
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May 8, 2013
Your computer was not assigned an address from the network (from the DHCP server) for the network card. The following error occurred 0x79. Your computer will continue to try to obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.
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Apr 20, 2013
Which partition should be active partition in windows 8....out these 5 partitions C:OS, pbr image , WINRETOOLS ,DIAGS and ESP??
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Sep 17, 2014
I have a new Dell 5537 comes with Windows 8.1. Day before, I tries to create a new partition in C: where is the the OS sits. After created an unallocated partition, I did not format it, jjust restart my laptop. Then it won't start. Even I use its Recovery disks, it cannot recover my system. NOW, I can see the Partition detail: 1: ESP Total 500MB Free 494MB SYSTEM2. DIAGS Total 40MB Free 35MB PRIMARY3. Total 128MB Free 128MB MSR(RESERVE)4. Total 2GB Free 1.7GB RECOVERY5. Total 920.6GB Free 920.4GB PRIMARY6.PBR IMAGE Total 8.2GB Free 4.3GB RECOVERY#5. Partition is where I have created a new partition but not format yet. Now I have a new Widnows 8.1 image file and tried to install in this partition, but it gave me an message: "WINDOWS CANNOT INSTALL, IT IS OF GPT PARTITION STYLE". so that I can install my new Windows 8.1 in this partition.
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Jan 17, 2014
I am dual booting my dell e6420, 8 gb ram. I have windows 8 on my HD and windows 8 on my ssd. Since I do live audio work, I keep the ssd system super clean. It doesn't get on the net, etc.
Recently windows prompted me to upgrade my hd os from 8 to 8.1, which I did. Since then, every few minutes, I get a popup saying I have Low disk space on my system reserved partition. It's 300 mb, which seems larger than most, but there is indeed only 1 mb free. But of course when I run disk cleanup, there is nothing that can be deleted!
It's now popping up about every 2 minutes. Very annoying.
I have 2 os's, do I even need the srp? But why on earth would it run out of memory? Maybe because of the dual boot? But I'd think they'd account for that.
should I expand the volume? That just seemed a little dangerous, and hopefully unnecessary.
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Jan 20, 2013
I have dell 14r special edition with win8. i'm trying to partition the drive and create extended partition. however the factory image is stored at the end of drive and all of the drive is considered as primary drive. i've two options
1. Delete or move the partition. if i do that will the recovery work.
2. Burn the factory image and delete the partition. but your backup software is not working for me to backup the image.
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Dec 25, 2013
My PC is Windows 8.1 x64.
I have a 2TB external (USB) drive and have created four partitions of equal size using Windows Disk Management, the first three are three are Primary (Healthy) but the fourth is "Logical"
How do I change it to a Std Partition, Basis or Primary.
Or does it matter, the Partition will be used for backup of files, so is it okay to use it as Logical?
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Dec 29, 2013
I am new to Windows 8, and first time with a laptop. I have 1tb hard drive (minus a few gb) in c drive. d drive is being used as recovery
This is how it was setup. What I would like to do is to partition the amount of space i have from c drive into another drive.
Can manage to partition some hard drive space over to another driver letter, if i do a fresh install of windows, will this new drive be formatted too?
(Just asking this because when I owned a desktop computer, I had two drives. A c-drive and a d-drive. When I re-installed windows 7 on the desktop, all my files were still available on the d-drive, hence asking the above last question).
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Apr 1, 2014
Win 8.1 will now allow me to change my Account or Lock Screen picture. When I attempt to do either, I see the "waiting" animation (little dots circling). Sometimes an error will report that it cannot change the picture.Created another account on my laptop (Inspiron 15 Notebook 3521) to determine if the problem was only associated with my primary (Admin rights) account. Unfortunately the issue exists with this new account, too.
Verified the Registry entry at: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerDesktopNameSpaceB4FB3F98-C1EA-428d-A78A-D1F5659CBA93.
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Dec 25, 2013
I can not boot my Toshiba laptop Windows 8.1 computer after I was attempting to resize partitions. I got in over my head. Now I'm stuck and cannot boot.
I believe the problem is I somehow created a second copy of my EFI partition. Now I have two "system" partitions of the same size.
Cannot boot, but got a command prompt. Ran "bcdedit" and got:
"The boot configuration data store could not be opened.The requested system device cannot be identified due to multiple indistinguishable devices potentially matching the identification criteria."
Other things I uncovered:
Diskpart> list partition
Partition 1 System
Partition 2 System
Partition 3 Reserved
Partition 4 Primary
Partition 5 Recovery
Partition 6 Recovery
(note both partitons 1 & 2 say "System" for type.)
Diskpart> Select Partition 1detail partition * Volume 2 System NTFS Partition 352 MB Healthy Hidden
Diskpart> Select Partition 2detail partition * Volume 3 FAT32 Partition 352 MB Healthy Hidden
I conclude that Partition 1 equates to Volume 2, Partition 2 to Volume 3. However there is no longer a "System" label on Part 2/Vol 3 once drilled down to details. Also its FAT32.
I am hoping/praying that I could "delete" one of the duplicate partitions. But scared to make any such move. Not sure where to go from here.
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