I Changed Drive Letter Now Computer Is Not Booting
Mar 21, 2010
I installed a new hard drive, the only drive, in my computer and installed XP pro. There was a card reader in the computer which was assigned c drive and the local drive was assigned h on the disk. I disconcected the card reader and changed the local disk to c from h in the registery. Now when I turn on the computer the blue screen introducing XP comes on and goes no farther.
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.
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
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".
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"
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
When XP Pro was functional I had 4 partitions on my 30 gig laptop drive in the following order as the appeared physically on the disk: 1: C: - a 2 gig dos partition for ancient non xp emulation compatible software 2: A linux partition for a common distro 3: the swap partition for the linux distro 4: E: - a 14 gig xp pro ntfs partition with my xp pro system files on it..
Now I believe my CD-ROM was using D: at this time for some reason or another... I don't quite remember for sure, but I am 100% positive that my system part was on E: So I grab paragon partition manager and wipe the linux partition and merge it with the E: partition.. I must have really messed something up in the merge because it ended up changing my e: system part to d:. So now the system goes all the way through the first windows xp splash screen and hangs on the second one, after it loads the gui and before it provides the login prompt. I've set up a BartPE disk so that I could load the hkey_local_user hive to rename the mounted drives, but I must be doing something wrong because it saves the changes i make to the mounted drive d: to e: but it does not actually change the name of the mounted drive... it's still showing up as D:.. I have not tried a repair install because I assume it will not work due to the fact that it will detect the windows OS on d: and will probably just correct the OS and not any of the applications installed. Instead of attempting this I would rather blow away the part and start over from scratch which I will when I get tired of fooling with this.
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"
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)
I was attempting to back up my hard drive to an external hard drive. The program (Norton Ghost 14) wasn't recognizing the drive. The Norton tech. helped me determine this was because under Disk Management there were no drive letters next to the drives. It showed a small partition on my primary drive, my primary drive, and my usb connected external hard drive, but none had drive letters next to them. I attempted to change their drive letters. It did something, but the letters still didn't show next to the drives. After this, everything disappeared on my desktop. I then rebooted and couldn't get to the login screen.Right now, when I start my computer I get the Dell bios revision screen, then the black MS Windows XP screen, and then the blue XP screen. Everything looks normal except that it stops short of the login area. My guess is that by changing the primary drive letter that my computer now cannot find anything because it appears the C drive is missing.
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
The Hard Disk Drive Icons in the "My computer" folder changed from an XP look and feel to a Win 98 look and feel. I right clicked on the Icon but I cannot change from there. Does anyone know how to change back the icons?
I recently purchased a USB external hard drive by Western Digital. The drive shows up in the device manager. but no drive letters show up in My Computer or Windows Explorer. I can click on Start,Run,F:, enter, and a window opens up with the drive letter as the header. Any ideas how I can get the drive letter to appear in My Computer of Windows Explorer?
I'm running windows xp home edition. I don't know what happened exactly but for whatever reason, the computer simply restarted itself for no apparent reason and then it wouldn't boot the operating system correctly so I tried to get into safe mode to try and diagnose the problem. I checked the bios to see if any error messages or a log had been recorded but found nothing. When I finally got it to go into safe mode, My user name was gone and it just said "Guest" and wanted a password to log on. I am the only user of my computer and was the administrator until this happened. Even when I tried to log on as the administrator, it still wanted a password
Every 3-4days my computer would freeze up while booting up at windows XP screen and scroll bars would freeze.What bohers me about this is i am sure what could be causing this. I use avg as my antivirus,and run A2, spybot,regcleaner, tweaknow on a weekly basis. I keep my system really clean, so now i am wondering is it my HD. PC: Win XP-PRO, 800MHZ AMD Athlon, 1024mb,80gHD. I did what cleaning i could in safemode, it still freeze on scroll bars. I tried last good config, result is the same. The last time i got pass the freezing was by doing a restore.
I have a Compaq Presario 900 which doesn't have a working CDrom drive.I took my harddrive out and put it in my friends Dell Inspiron B130 and installed Windows xp SP2. Now that all works fine but(there is always a but ....) when I tried to put the harddrive back into my laptop(Presario 900) Windows will not boot, even if I go to safemode first thing. I thought maybe I could install Windows from the USB port but my BIOS doesn't have a BOOT FROM USB option. Also there is no Bios update that will give me that option.I have tried deleting and installing all the drivers for the Presario then trying to boot like that but it still gets stuck.
My friend has a laptop, and the power supply went on it. He gave me his hard drive, so I can back up his data. I removed the hard drive in my laptop, and installed his. When I boot I get a blue screen that says remove any newly installed hard drive or controllers. I cant get windows to boot, so that I can backup the data.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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 .
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.