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View Full Version : Replaced drive, how do I change System Partition Drive letter back to C?


Pete
April 26th 03, 04:33 PM
Hello.
I'm running Windows XP Pro SP1. Hard Drive issue pertains
to Western Digital 180 Gig IDE attached to a Promise
ULTRA100 TX2 (with the BIOS Upgraded to support dives
larger than 137 GB.)

My HDD failed, partially, and I recieved a replacement
drive via an advance ship RMA. My system partition and
one of the extended volumes are formated NTFS. The third
partition is presently FAT32.

I used Data Lifeguard tools to do a sector by sector image
(Similar to Ghost or Driver Image), I ended up with drive
letter problems.

With mine, the newly imaged drive (hereafter referred to
as Master) was assigned drive letters I (system
Partition), J, & K. The Dying HDD still maintained it's
original drive letters of C, E, & F despite being
connected as a slave.

I opened disk manager and assigned the slave drive E & F
partitions new drive letters (Y & Z) then removed the
pagefile from C. After rebooting, I assigned Drive
letters E & F to J & K (On the Master.) So far, so good.

Here's where the problems began.

When I changed the Slave drive letter C to X (to make C
available to the new HDD) and rebooted, Windows XP was
unable to access the registration information and would
not allow me to log in. I tried to replace the MBR 1st,
but this did not help. I was afraid to replace the entire
boot record from thew management console because of a
warning about non-standard partitions and the possibility
of making all volumes innaccessible. I had to run the
Data Lifeguard tools again in order to copy the I
partition on the master back over the former C partition
on the slave. This permitted me to access the OS again.

Next, I ran XP setup from the OS while it was accessible.
When the system rebooted for the 1st time, I powered off
and disconnected the slave drive, then resumed setup.
Setup completed successfully, and I could now access the
OS from the new drive exclusively. So far, so good.

The remaining problem, however, is that my system
partition remains named "I." I am unable to change the
drive letter because it is the System partition which is
in use.

Can anyone suggest how to correct this problem? I have
the follwing tools available:

Ghost, Data LifeGuard tools, Partition Magic 8, and NTFS
Pro (which allows me to mount the NTFS Volumes from a dos
boot disk and run DOS commands, much like the recovery
Console.

I still have the old drive (Slave) although it does
experience intermittent read errors. I have not yet
deleted the System partition in case I need it. I really
want to end up with the system partition omn the new drive
as C, not I. At this time I am unable to access many
programs that refer to the C drive.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Pete


Peter Hutchison
December 6th 03, 09:10 PM
On Sat, 26 Apr 2003 08:33:04 -0700, "Pete"
> wrote:

>Hello.
>I'm running Windows XP Pro SP1. Hard Drive issue pertains
>to Western Digital 180 Gig IDE attached to a Promise
>ULTRA100 TX2 (with the BIOS Upgraded to support dives
>larger than 137 GB.)
>
>My HDD failed, partially, and I recieved a replacement
>drive via an advance ship RMA. My system partition and
>one of the extended volumes are formated NTFS. The third
>partition is presently FAT32.
>

To get system back to C: is to reinstall Windows, onto your Primary
partition on your boot disk.

Moving paging files and so on does not move applications or registry
settings back to C:. You will need to reinstall applications to point
to the correct drive or use regedit and change every single entry that
points to wrong drive to new drive.

Peter Hutchison
Windows FAQ
http://www.pcguru.plus.com/winfaqs.html

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