Changing system drive from f: to C: please help.

[tpe 0]

Can anyone give me any sugestions how to change a system drive with the assignmet F: to C:

 

 

I know it sounds odd, but winXP boots up using the drive (new system disk) and retains its previous drive letter f:

 

In the disk manager it is shown as the system disk and is active but when i try and change it i am not allowed as it is the system disk.

 

To try and solve it I have put the old C: (old system disk) in as a non system disk, changed its letter to P: and then booted from it. When i do this and then boot up using the old system disk as p: as the system disk and the new system disk F: as a data only disk i get the problem that even though i have assigned it the letter the old system disk P it boots up as C: when used as the active system disk preventing me from changing the letter of the non active new system disk f: to C:

 

Furthermore when i boot up on my old system disk and remove the drive letter of my non active new system disk in disk manager it reestablishes its self as F: again when restart with it as an active system disk.

 

Hope that wasnt too confusing

 

Many thanks

 

tpe

[tpe 0]

There is an article in ms knowledge base on doing it in win2k. Gonna try this, if it breaks anything ill be sure to post my frustration later

 

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

 

 

Well tryed that and it only suceeded in removing the drive letter totally and making the partition inactive, so watch out you WILL NOT be able to boot from it after

 

However if you run setup from the xp cd afterwards and hit repair console type fixmbr and fix boot then reboot and run setup again, this time skipping the repair console entering r when given the second oppertunity to repair the installed version of windows it makes the drive boot as C again.

[duhmez 0]

Easy fix. Boot from a win98/ME boot disk.

then

 

fdisk/mbr

The windows will rebuild the drive letters as they should be.

 

you can get a windows boot disk from http://drd.dyndns.org

[DS3Circuit 0]

That may work on clean installs of an OS but what if you have numerous applications installed .... you would need to go through shortcuts, the registry, maybe INF/INI files to redirect static entries from "g:\" to "c:\"

 

If such is the case, I believe with Partition Magic there is an included utility to do such a thing.

 

2 cents

[Uykucu 0]

Quote:

Easy fix. Boot from a win98/ME boot disk.
then

fdisk/mbr
The windows will rebuild the drive letters as they should be.

you can get a windows boot disk from http://drd.dyndns.org

Well if it happens to be an NTFS volume i sure hope you won't do what he suggests...

either reainstall windows or just go with F: It's not a problem just an oddity...

[tpe 0]

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

duhmez it worked with something like that in the end but with the winxp versions instead and then repaired

 

DS3Circuit now you tell me partitian magik will do it, duh

 

Uykucu thanks for the warning, it was fat32 and in the end it needed a repair after using the fix tools from the winxp cd. 6 hours of loosing my hair and a week after it all sounds quite fun now,, but it was a nightmare at the time. It works now though, even with the old proggies that wont accept F: as a system drive. phew.

 

thanks again

 

tpe