Reassign system drive letter

After a major computer crash, I had to assign the system
hard drive with the drive letter F: (it's a LONG story).
This is causing many applications to fail installation
because the default install path is drive letter C: and I
can not change the path manually during the installation.
I have freed the drive letter C: again - Does anyone have
any thoughts on how can I re-asssign this letter to the
hard drive?

About the only successful way to do it is to reinstall XP clean with the
drives configured properly so that it will see the boot drive as C. This
Windows 2000 KB article describes how to do it without a reinstall. Note
however that a very real outcome of following the steps in this article
will be that the system won't boot, requiring a reinstall anyway.

HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=223188

--
Tom Porterfield
Windows XP / Smart Display MVP
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tp.porterfield/support

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

"JD" wrote in message
...
After a major computer crash, I had to assign the system
hard drive with the drive letter F: (it's a LONG story).
This is causing many applications to fail installation
because the default install path is drive letter C: and I
can not change the path manually during the installation.
I have freed the drive letter C: again - Does anyone have
any thoughts on how can I re-asssign this letter to the
hard drive?