Changing Boot Drive Letter
Dec 3, 2006
I was doing a new installation of XP home on a new hard drive, XP formatted the drive as F: and installed the boot sector there because a thumb drive was in the usb port (which it recognized as C:). I wasn't paying that close of attention and I didn't realize XP would see that thumb drive as C:. My question: is there any way to change the boot letter back to C: without reformatting the hard drive?
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Oct 8, 2008
I recently installed a new hard drive into a friends computer and installed XP Home.
I ran all the updates and service packs.
I left later that day and let him install all his applications.
I got a call tonight from him saying he really screwed up and doesn't know what to do.
I had to follow his thinking over the phone so I hope I get this all correct.
He had trouble loading the drivers for his HP printer. He would get an error saying that a C: empHP_WebRelease folder was missing. He did manage to figure out that for some reason when I installed XP it called the Boot drive "I" instead of "C"
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May 25, 2004
I installed a Serial ATA hard drive. Booted from floppy,partitioned and formatted 120mb HD,with 2 partitions.
Connected my old IDE drive and booted from Norton Ghostdisc, cloned my old drive to the new one. Removed all drives and USB card readers except the new SATA drive. Windows will not fully boot, it halts at the blue Windows intro screen. Restarted Windows, and scandisk ran, but indicated drive letter "H" not "C", so I guess the windows installation is still looking in the original place for it's files, ie. the "C" drive, that's why it won't boot. You cannot change the "System" drive letter from "Computer Management" within XP, and I cannot get into Windows anyway. Is there a "work around" for this, other than a clean install? Even then, is it still going to be drive "H"? And that means another Windows activation. How many goes do you get for activation? I tried a windows repair installation, and reactivation (wasted). Windows then worked, sort of. Lots of things were missing and programs unuseable,as they were looking for their files on "C": so I went back to square 1, put my old drive back in for the moment
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Jan 22, 2006
I bought a computer for my wife and kids. Well months go by and my wife tries to install something and notices that the MAIN drive is H: not C:
I figured that it was weird but no big deal. Well I purchased a printer for her and while trying to install the software it was giving me a "Windows - No Disk in Drive" error.
I did some research and spoke to HP tech support and they suggested that I search the web for a way to change the drive letters from H: (current hard drive) to C: (supposed to be default drive)
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Nov 26, 2009
I have a dual boot system with both having windows xp.When I load into the 1st XP installation, the following is the list and assignment of the drives:
C : Local Disk (contains the 1st XP installation)
D : CD Drive
E : Local Disk (contains data and also few installed program folders)
F : Local Disk (contains the 2nd XP installation)
Initially when I noticed this drive arrangement after setting up the dual boot, I just left it as is, not knowing what to do.But nowadays I am having a lot of problems as the installed programs are not accessible because their target location keeps changing, everytime I keep switching between the two operating systems.How can I solve this problem?Can I do the follwing : Load into the 1st XP installation, and then change the drive letters (of the last three drives) such that they are matching the drive assignment as seen when loading into the 2nd XP installation.Here in a way I have kept the same drive name for both installations.But Will this work?I also have some of the program folders for the 1st xp installation stored in E drive, and after changing it to D drive, will all the links be properly converted upon restart?
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Jul 25, 2005
how can i change the drive letter of my boot volume
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Jun 23, 2010
I reformatted a crappy gate way which has a recovery partition, but it would not reformat the rigth way, when i went to set up windows, Push the next button, i big white box went over everything and that was that, i reformatted 3 times and it kept doing it, so i got a winxp pro disk and did it this way, everything works geat, but now, that damn partition is taking my drive letter C, and i have already read the thing from microsoft about regedit, i did it and i could not load windows, it froze after Loadined winxp, mouse moved but nothing happend, i reformatted again... still taking my drive letter.. please help, if i have to reformat one more time, i wish for it to be the last, and my drive letters to be right.. HELP!! THANKS
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Jan 3, 2006
I have Windows XP Home Edition, SP2 on two separate bootable hard drives in my Dell XPS B1000r. I have my 80 GB �main� hard drive and a 40 GB �extra� hard drive. I mainly boot from my �main� 80 GB hard drive, and that�s the drive that won�t boot after I changed the drive letter.
I wanted to rename the Drive letters associated with each of these hard drives. I was able to change the �extra� hard drive using the Disk Management option. I was not able to change the letter of my �main� hard drive, because I booted from it. I used Regedit to change the boot drive letter, based on the Microsoft Help & Support article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;Q223188
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Jun 24, 2006
I just upgraded to a 300GB hard drive from a 250, which I will use as a backup drive. However, when I set it up, the primary boot partition got set up as D:. I have 5 partitions on this drive. The others were also mislabeled, but I could change them with the Computer Management tool. There is no C drive on this system. I want to make what is now D become C.The original also had 5 partitions. All I wanted to do is duplicate the old drive to the new one. Somehow, the boot partition became D and I can't change it from within Windows. Is there a way to do that? I have created the UBD for Windows using Bart's PE, so I can boot the machine independently of using the hard drive. If I can use that, is there a tool there or a command line program I can use to change it?
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Jan 8, 2006
I recently purchased a new hard drive and used the software that came with it to set up the new drive as the boot drive and the old drive as the slave. However after installation, it still shows the old drive as the boot drive and the new drive as the slave.I have set the jumpers to "master" on the new drive and slave on the old drive. Is there any way to change this? I dont know what else to do siince the jumpers are set correctly. running winXP home with Dell Pentium 4.
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Jul 8, 2008
I have a hard drive that comes with my PC and that has a corrupted Windows, but the boot.ini still works fine. So I got a new hard drive and installed a new fresh copy of Windows XP on it. So now I want to format the old hard drive and use the new hard drive as the boot drive. However, if I removed the old hard drive, the new hard drive doesn't boot at all. I've tried using the FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, and BOOTCFG /REBUILD commands, but I think I did it wrong.
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Sep 5, 2009
I was running windows on an IDE hard drive and bought a new SATA and installed a fresh copy of windows on it, now having a dual boot with the old installation on the IDE. I've been running on the SATA drive for a few months now and I want to remove the IDE drive from my system but when I disconnect it and reboot I get a message that tells me NTLDR is missing so I am assuming that the boot record is on the IDE drive. How can I make the SATA drive my main boot drive?
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Aug 27, 2005
if we can assign a letter for a drive [for example, C:], then, can I assign a letter to a folder? Because when I save/open a file or anything like that, I can just type the letter of the drive if I want to access a drive
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Aug 3, 2005
My office has a number of mapped network drives for each user which, unfortunately, start at drive letter F.Each time a USB device is used on the computer it is also automatically assigned the drive letter F (presuming that C is hard disk and D and E are CD/DVD drives). This has to be manually changed from within Disk Management.Apparently this is as a result of physical drives taking precedent over the mapped network drives.Is there any workaround for this other than moving the mapped drive letters further along in the alphabet? - this is not really a feasible solution at this time.
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Jul 31, 2005
I had to reinstall XP because of spyware issues. I saved important data on my slave drive. I reinstalled XP. Now the bios, device manager, and disk manager recognizes the slave drive but didn't assign it a drive letter. In disk manager it shows as a basic disk, NTFS, Healthy (Active), 18.65 GB,Online. When I right click the volume to assign a drive letter it is grayed out.
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May 29, 2006
After reformating my pc, my secondary hard drive is now designated as drive "D". Before the reformat it was drive "G". I have software that needs to get data from drive "G" but the drive is not designated as "G" any longer. I can't remember how to reassign the drive letters so that I can designate the secondary drive as "G".
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Nov 22, 2009
I have just bought and installed (to the point of completing initialization under Disk Management) a new 1 TB hard drive. Originally, I was planning to use it solely for data storage.However, I am thinking of installing Windows XP Pro and all the programs I currently use on it, thereby making it the new OS and programs drive, while using the original 120 GB HD as a data/backup drive.I think the main appeal of doing this, for me, is that it also presents an opportunity to reinstall Windows on a machine which hasn't had this done for more than three years, and which currently seems to take at least five minutes to boot to a "usable" state, despite having a reasonably high spec for its age (it was bought in 2001, but as a result of the upgrade
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Sep 6, 2008
My external drive has always been "E" and I have several desktop shortcuts that relate. Recently I inserted a flash drive containing home movies and after viewing and a reboot later I noticed that my external drive is now shown as "New Volume F". I would like to change it back to "E"
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Jan 23, 2007
A laptop has 5 mapped drives which are only used on the office. Offline files is not an option. When a user on the road clicks on a mapped drive by mistake, the explorer window locks up while it tries to find it.
Instead of doing something sensible like taking the explorer window to C: drive or desktop, it goes to the next drive letter. Of course this is also unavailable. So the machine is essentially unusable for about 5 minutes if the user mis-clicks once.
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Feb 3, 2008
not being computer literate , i am having a problem with a new hard drive . i took out the old one . i have the windows disc and product codes , but i can't get it to boot to start the windows installation. i have done it on another computer , and the disc begins installing windows on start up. i have tried starting the computer with the disc in place , and without it . obviously , i must be missing something to get it started . the disc is brand new .
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Jul 14, 2005
On our WinXP systems (SP1 & 2), when users attempt to us usb flash drives, sometimes the O/S tries to assign an already used network drive letter to the device, making it unaccessible. Of course, the non-admin users can't use drive manager to change the drive letter. Is their a way around this problem?
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Dec 7, 2005
Problem is after reinstalling xp on a new hard drive my second drive only shows up in disk management does not show up in my computer .It has all my stuff on it from my old drive so really need teh info on it badly.But under disc manmgement where it shows up healthy with no drive letter everything is blanked out except delete partition.
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Feb 19, 2009
Win XP Pro, USB 1.1 in front, 2.0 card added to PCI slot.I can put in a jump drive or a flash memory card reader and hear the XP bong, it does the new software found and says it's available, but It does not show on 'my computer'.I can go to manage, disk drives, and see it. I can right click and assign a drive letter, but still does not appear on 'my computer'.I can still open it after assigning a drive letter in 'manage' and read/write files from a new window.I'm suspecting BIOS? It was a machine I upgraded to XP Pro.
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Sep 2, 2006
I have a Dell Pentium 4 computer that has it's C: drive changed to the drive letter F: which causes some problems for me. I would like to know how I can change it back to C: without reloading my OS.
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Apr 30, 2008
as i know at winxp disk management there can change drive letter, i saw on there only have A: to Z: only, is it only can assign drive letter from A: to Z: only? if i need more drive letter how?
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Aug 18, 2009
I am having an issue with changing the main drive letter on my mother's computer. I made a pretty amateur mistake when I was re-installing Windows XP for her and left my external hard drive connected from taking her files off of her old hard drive so the installing found "H:" being the most appropriate drive letter and now a few badly written programs she has tried to install automatically fail because they are set to look for drive "C:".I know my only option is to re-install yet again to get a fresh start, but I was hoping there was another possibility (albeit might be harder) to set the drive letter right. Typically I went to "manage" and "drives and storage" and attempted to change the letter, but Windows will not allow me to change the drive letter of the main volume. If anyone has any suggestion, please throw them out there-I may have made an newbie mistake, but I know my way around pretty well.
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Nov 4, 2008
When I open an e-mail with an attachment,I get the message-drive letter access component has encountered a problem.I have to download it into my documents,then it will open.What is the problem?
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Dec 18, 2004
I am trying to revive the local Priest's computer - he has nothing backed up (and I'm not even Catholic ;-))
He has a Dell Dimension 933r running Windows XP Home. When he started the computer yesterday it started to boot into Windows and then just restarts in an endless cycle. It got to a point where it came up with an error "autochk not found - skipping autochk" and then a Windows XP BSOD (the ones with some hex addresses) pops up with an error for about a tenth of a second (I cannot read anything on it - it is too fast).
I pulled the drive and put it in another computer. The computer (Win XP Pro) finds the drive and it shows as "healthy" in Disk Management, but it does not assign it a drive letter. I would just like to be able to get in and copy his data.
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May 10, 2008
I've had to reinstall Win XP Pro on my computer.Now here's the twist, before the reinstall I had the following drives;
C (Computer Drive)
F (My Sister's Drive)
D (Mp3 & Wav)
E (Digital Pics)
I proceded to reinstall Win XP Pro only to discover that my original C drive was now labeled F, and the original F drive is now labeled C.
I installed it anyway thinking I could just change the drive letters afterwards. So I thought, I cannot change either one as drive F's status (Boot Volume) and drive C's status (System Volume), and Windows will not allow any drive letter changes to System and Boot volume drives.
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Apr 21, 2009
I just upgraded my "guts" (mobo, ram, cpu) and am trying to get all set up. I installed windows XP on a brand new hard drive on a newly created partition. On the setup screen, it says C: Partition1 [NTFS] I left some unpartitioned space on the new drive for a later win xp 64bit version install and I also have another HD that is listed as D: Partition1. After the install, my system disk drive letter was F: and my other HD letter was E: I go to disk management and I can change my second HD letter but it won't let me change my system drive letter back to C:. How do I get my system drive letter back to C:?
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Aug 14, 2006
I want the drive letter of my Sony DVDR/RW to be X, but every time I reboot it changes itself to drive H. I am using xp home, SP2.
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