Drive Letter Problems

When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C" instead of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

I had seen this problem before and got an answer but don't remember what it
was now(sorry). I just reloaded WinXP on a backup system and this
peculiararity happened again. All I did was to reformat and reinstall and
it works the second time properly.

"Paul J. Veres" wrote in message
gy.com...
When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive
the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C" instead
of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

You'll have to do another clean install but first of all ensure that the 1st
hard drive you wish to use as the system drive is assigned as the master and
the 2nd hard drive as the slave. When you start the setup with XP delete the
2nd drive and do not format it and then quit the setup and physically
disconnect the 2nd hard drive with power removed of course. Startup your PC
and start the windows XP setup from CD and delete the 1st hard drive info
and format it and load Win XP to it.

regards

B

"Paul J. Veres" wrote in message
gy.com...
When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive
the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C" instead
of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:50:55 +0000, Paul J. Veres wrote:

When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C" instead of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

MS assigns drive letters in this order.
1st active partition gets C. Next active partition gets D, etc, until all
active partitions have leters. Then it assigns logical partitons. If you
have 3 active partitions, then C would be assigned to the first active
partition on the Mater HD on the first controller. D to second. If there
are no more active partitions on the drive, it will then go to the slave
drive on that controller and assign active parttions. Then it will
continue on to the Master of the second controller, and then on to the
slave of the second controller, assigning drive letters to all active
partitions it finds. I haven't used windows since 98, so XP may let you
install on logical partitions like other OS's, but I doubt it. If it
skipped C & D active partitions, then maybe they didn't have enough room
for the install. Autoimatic sucks. Tell it where to install if you can
(assuming you know).

--
Abit KT7-Raid (KT133) Tbred B core CPU @2400MHz (24x100FSB)
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.html

"Paul J. Veres" wrote in message
gy.com...
When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive
the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C" instead
of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

I've had success with this proceedure, renaming drives in the registry.
HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default...n-us;q223188#2

Some good information and links here too:
http://perso.numericable.fr/~gjullien/copy_xp.htm
"Each disk has a signature (written on the disk) and each volume has an
identifier (written on the volume, specific to the disk and the volume). The
registry assigns letters to identifiers (at install or when a new disk is
added).
Some consequences:
When a new disk is added: the registry assigns or reassigns letters not in
use at that time to the volumes of the new disk (even if the letters have
been already assigned to a disk now absent). "

Thanks for all the responses. I found what I needed in
http://support.microsoft.com/default...n-us;q223188#2



ve H." wrote in message
...
"Paul J. Veres" wrote in
messagehttp://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q223188#2
gy.com...
When I installed WinXP Pro to my system, it assigned my first hard drive
the
letter "E" instead of "C" and my second hard drive the letter "C"
instead
of
"D". This can't be changed under Administrative Tools. Anybody have
any
ideas how to reassign the correct letters without doing another clean
install?

I've had success with this proceedure, renaming drives in the registry.
HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default...n-us;q223188#2

Some good information and links here too:
http://perso.numericable.fr/~gjullien/copy_xp.htm
"Each disk has a signature (written on the disk) and each volume has an
identifier (written on the volume, specific to the disk and the volume).
The
registry assigns letters to identifiers (at install or when a new disk is
added).
Some consequences:
When a new disk is added: the registry assigns or reassigns letters not in
use at that time to the volumes of the new disk (even if the letters have
been already assigned to a disk now absent). "

"Paul J. Veres" wrote in message
gy.com...
Thanks for all the responses. I found what I needed in
http://support.microsoft.com/default...n-us;q223188#2



This fix is fine however it still doesn't explain why only WinXP does this.
This is the only M$ OS I have seen this occur. If I am not mistaken it has
happened to me every time I reinstall onto a new hard drive where a second
drive is already present.