Windows 8.1 Changes A Certain Partition Letter On Reboot?
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.
View 2 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
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.
View 4 Replies
View Related
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.
View 3 Replies
View Related
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:
View 3 Replies
View Related
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.
View 1 Replies
View Related
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?
View 6 Replies
View Related
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?
View 4 Replies
View Related
Sep 15, 2014
To my own stupidity I decided to update my computer from Windows 8 to 8.1, every thing would be fine if not for the fact that my screen is now stuck as a letterbox.
The native for my monitor is 1920-1080 and was what I was running at pre-update, after restarting, my screen is confined to a letterbox setting. Changing the resolution does nothing, when looking for a solution I came across a post from this thread:
8.1 upgrade - generic video driver problem
I've got the same graphics card as the OP and have found the same events. My question is what did he mean when he said
"I deleted the AMD leaf-item (Control Panel, Display adapters, AMD Radeon HD 7650D)and rebooted the system." in post 3.
Did he go ahead and un-install it? Clarification on what he exactly done would be great.
btw, if I did go ahead and un-install my graphics card like the OP originally suggested, would it reinstall on restart?
View 3 Replies
View Related
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?
View 16 Replies
View Related
Aug 10, 2014
I would like to add a partition to a drive having the following partitions:
Number Partition Size 1 Windows RE 499 MB 2 EFI System 300 MB 3 MSR 128 MB 4 C: 216 GB 5 Windows RE 450 MB 6 Samsung Image 19 GB 7 Samsung Recovery 1 GB
This should be easy to do with MiniTool Partition Wizard. In essence, resize "C:", add the partition in the unallocated space, assign the drive letter "D" to the new partition, and format it to NTFS.
You will notice that the drive has two Windows RE partitions. This is because I updated to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 through the Microsoft Store.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 21, 2013
Why I am not able to choose the underlined letter when hitting alt-x which brings up the quick list of shortcuts? I was able to before and now it no longer allows it. I have to select w/the mouse. No huge deal but want things to be how they were. I 've also tried using Win 8's "refresh" to no avail.
View 9 Replies
View Related
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: ?
View 1 Replies
View Related
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...
View 2 Replies
View Related
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.
View 5 Replies
View Related
Sep 21, 2013
I have a long alphabetical list of words straight down the page and they are 1 word per line.
I'd like to keep the alphabetical order but sort in groups by first letter with 5 spaces between each.
The list is too long to click in front of each word, backspace & tab. This is how I want it to appear
apple attire atom
cab cat cage camel cart
deep deer
View 3 Replies
View Related
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.
View 4 Replies
View Related
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.
View 1 Replies
View Related
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.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Mar 6, 2014
Windows Office 2007 - There is no better - however the migration to Win 8 ruined all my default settings! Anyhoo, I have already sussed out that one may apply headers and footers to repeating pages, but I'm very confused as to how one may apply ones business design - which is a WHOLE page, over which I type my gumpf... So far, I just insert a text box onto the page, but this only works for one page at a time. The answer should lie in converting it all to a JPG.
View 6 Replies
View Related
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).
View 3 Replies
View Related
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.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 30, 2013
I have win 8 pro installed & two HDDs with two partions each , I want to migrate the boot partition to another partition on the second drive .
It would have been easier if i would have just cloned the complete drives but one of the partions on the 2nd drive has data which cannot be deleted .
So I have Drive
1 - Partitions C: ( boot partition ) & D:
Drive 2 - Partitions E: & F:
I want to remove Drive 1 from my PC so i want to copy C: to E: then remove drive 1 & boot from E:
I tried "Easeus todo backup" , did not work, it does not make the copy bootable , to make it bootale the whole drive has to be copied .
I tried making an image of C: using Windows 8 inbuilt backup feature then removed drive 1 , installed Windows 8 on E: then tried restoring the image of C: but i got some error.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Dec 12, 2013
I used to have System Reserved on separate partion to C: but on my last fresh re-install, I decided to make C: and System Reserved in one partition. Here's what shows on Disk Management:
My question is, which is better. System Reserved on the same partition with C: or on a separate partition?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 22, 2013
Suddenly, the Acronis program I used to always use for partition copy, won't detect my USB mouse and KB. So, I'm having to do it with Partition Wizard 7. I've never used that to move a system partition, are there any issues doing it that way? The only other program I used to use for this kind of Op is paragon partition manager, which the version I have is not compatible with 8.
I don't like doing it this way, it's very slow compared to using the Acronis program, which seems to fly fast.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Oct 14, 2013
I want to create a second primary partition on my first harddisk(disk 0 look at picture)
from the free space there in the extended partition(view screenshot). Now my problem is that whenever I want to create a new partition by right clicking and selecting "New Simple Volume" and selecting the formatting etc, I get another logical drive in the extended partition(look at picture below).
Is is not what I want. I want to move that free space out from the extended partition and add the unallocated 9 MB to it and then create a second primary partition on disk 0.
Note: If its possible I want to do this without using any third party software, IF POSSIBLE.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Feb 27, 2013
This is my basic spread prime contains a win 7 installation(active) halo contains a win 8 installation(boot) and is a logical partition What I need to do is: format prime and combine it with halo , this will be my boot and active keep logic and halo as it is an my logical drives I cannot lose data in halo or logic. how do I go about doing this ..
View 2 Replies
View Related
Aug 21, 2014
Im having a nightmare getting my Windows 8.1 to boot properly. I've Had Windows 8 for over a year now! and I was forced to roll back to Windows 7. But now it's time to get it working properly!
Here is my problem:
My pc boots to a black screen after windows logo (no cursor or anything) and when it does i have to reboot my pc about 5-6 times before it actually boots properly. Now here's the biggest problem--> when I have made a succesfull boot (after rebooting 5-6 times) i have to shutdown my computer and wait 2-3 hours at least, before i can recreate the error again. This makes the problem solving process even more painful.
I've tried just about anything that I could find on the web and weirdly enough, My problem doesn't seem to be quite the same as all the other posts -_- ..
Here's a list of things that I've tried that i can remember:
Updated all drivers to latest versionsReinstalled several timesenabled UEFI boot (and disabled)Booted with only 1 monitor connected (tried VGA and DVI)disabled fast startup
(I didn't connect unessecary hardware or had cd's in the machine. Only a monitor, keyboard and mouse)
I've properly tried more than that, but can't remember it all.
I was told that i should try to connect a monitor using a hdmi cable, because Windows 8 could shoot the signal out of the HDMI port.
View 1 Replies
View Related
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.
View 3 Replies
View Related
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.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jan 19, 2014
Any time windows updates, it's supposed to turn off, then turn back on to finish.
Well anytime it turns off, it won't turn back on. The last time it did this, it corrupted the BCD.
The computer shuts down ok via the menu, and will start back up when I power it on, but if I hit restart, it just shuts off, and won't come back on unless the power button is pressed.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 9, 2014
This is a new computer and OS for me, so I may just not be familiar with how it is SUPPOSED to work. When we got the computer I loaded Office, Photoshop, Browsers, etc. I set up the tiles on the start menu. But since the computer rebooted (and every time since then), the tiles have disappeared and the computer acts like its the first time I've used Firefox ("do you want to make this your default browser?").
Each time I reboot, Word is still on the computer but it has to activate and set my initials as if I've never opened it on the computer before. The only hint of something I think I could do differently is that when I'm on the " PC Settings(?)" screen under Sync options it tells me I am logged into a temporary profile. I can't figure out how to change this though.
View 4 Replies
View Related
