Help please with Drive Letter

[Steve]

Hello everybody

I recently had my old 30GB Drive die on me and went out and purchased a new
one, a 120GB IBM.

I had to do a complete reinstall of XP and noticed after that my boot drive
now has the assignment F: I have a spare drive (D) mounted and a CD Rom (E)
CD Burner (G) is there any way I can get the drive back to being C: again ?
I looked at doing it in Partition Magic but it warned that changing the Boot
Drive letter may not allow Windows to boot from that drive again :(

Any ideas please ?

Thx in advance

Steve

[Alvin A Brown]

Hello

See lin below, or you may have to reformat but the link should be
able to assist you

Setup for re-assigning driver letters
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188

Alvin





Steve wrote:

> Hello everybody
>
> I recently had my old 30GB Drive die on me and went out and purchased a new
> one, a 120GB IBM.
>
> I had to do a complete reinstall of XP and noticed after that my boot drive
> now has the assignment F: I have a spare drive (D) mounted and a CD Rom (E)
> CD Burner (G) is there any way I can get the drive back to being C: again ?
> I looked at doing it in Partition Magic but it warned that changing the Boot
> Drive letter may not allow Windows to boot from that drive again :(
>
> Any ideas please ?
>
> Thx in advance
>
> Steve

[R. C. White]

Hi, Steve.

That's what happens when WinXP Setup detects an Active (bootable) partition
already in place when it installs WinXP. It finds the letter C: already
taken so it uses the next available letter for the new "system partition".
To avoid this, be sure that your new HD is in the Master position and your
old HD is not plugged in at all when you boot from the WinXP CD-ROM to start
the fresh install.

At this stage, you might save time and effort by abandoning this first
attempt and clean install WinXP again on that new HD - BEFORE you go to the
trouble of reinstalling all your apps and data on it. And before those apps
learn to look for their components on Drive F:.

Also, before you go too far, go to Disk Management and specifically assign
drive letters the way you want them organized. If you don't, then WinXP
will use its own algorithm and reassign the letters each time you boot, and
they may change as you add and remove devices. After that, you can plug in
your old drive as slave or secondary, if you like, and repartition,
re-letter and reformat it as you choose. I suggest you assign your CD/DVD
drives letters further out in the alphabet (V: for DVD and W: for
Writeable?) so that they won't be in the way if you ever add or reorganize
HDs or partitions.

One final suggestion: Right now, while you have "more disk space than
you'll ever use", let WinXP Setup create a partition that uses less than all
the physical drive. Let the rest remain "unallocated space" for now.
Later, you can use Disk Management (or Partition Manager) to create new
partitions there for such things as a second installation of WinXP. A
second copy of WinXP comes in handy from time to time for maintenance on
your first copy, or as a "sandbox" to try out new software.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP

"Steve" > wrote in message
...
> Hello everybody
>
> I recently had my old 30GB Drive die on me and went out and purchased a
new
> one, a 120GB IBM.
>
> I had to do a complete reinstall of XP and noticed after that my boot
drive
> now has the assignment F: I have a spare drive (D) mounted and a CD Rom
(E)
> CD Burner (G) is there any way I can get the drive back to being C: again
?
> I looked at doing it in Partition Magic but it warned that changing the
Boot
> Drive letter may not allow Windows to boot from that drive again :(
>
> Any ideas please ?
>
> Thx in advance
>
> Steve

[Steve]

Just wanted to say a big thank you to you for your useful comments and help.

Steve

[R. C. White]

You're welcome, Steve. That's what newsgroups are for. ;<)

For the benefit of others right behind us on this learning curve, could you
please post what worked and what didn't? In a newsgroup, we all learn from
each other. ;<)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP

"Steve" > wrote in message
...
> Just wanted to say a big thank you to you for your useful comments and
help.
>
> Steve