How do I change drive letter assignments in Windows XP?
Kjell Arne Johansen
Unfortunaltely my systemdisk has got the "d" letter and my datadisk has
got the "c" letter.
How do I change this so the systemdisk get the "c" letter and my datadisk
get the "d" letter?
Kjell Arne Johansen
Z
This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in
Windows. For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive
letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may
want to do this is when the drive letters get changed without any user
intervention. This may happen when you break a mirror volume or there is a
drive configuration change. This should be a rare occurrence and you should
change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.
Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
Log on as an Administrator.
Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Click MountedDevices .
On the Security menu, click Permissions .
Check to make sure Administrators have full control. Change this back when
you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for
"\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C: , and then click Rename .
NOTE : You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:". (This will free up
drive letter C: to be used later.)
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D: , and then click Rename .
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z: , click Rename , and then name it back to
"\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this
should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.
Z-HTH
"Kjell Arne Johansen" <kjel...@online.no> wrote in message
news:20020509...@mis.configured.host...
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JBR
"Administration tools" which allows you to change drive letters...
"Z" <B@MAN> a écrit dans le message de news: OmzqW$09BHA.1692@tkmsftngp05...
Doug Knox MS-MVP
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"JBR" <jbro...@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message news:7DtC8.126836$N8.10...@bin5.nnrp.aus1.giganews.com...
Parish
> It seems to me that there is a "Disks management" tool in the
> "Administration tools" which allows you to change drive letters...
>
Except that it won't permit you to change the drive letters for the
system or boot volumes.
DONT'T!!! try the procedure detailed in Q233188 (quoted below). It is
for restoring drive letters to their *original* settings only. Read the
summary in Q233188 *very* carefully and/or my post in the thread
"Changing Drive Letters on HD's" in this NG. Also, read all the posts in
all the threads on this subject and note that everyone who tried the
procedure in Q233188 ended up with an unbootable system.
Learn to love the drive letter(s) Microsoft chose for you :-)
HTH
Regards,
Parish.
Kjell Arne Johansen
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 09.05.2002, 13:49:11, "Z" <B@MAN> wrote regarding Re: How do I change
drive letter assignments in Windows XP?:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q223188
Thanks, thats what I needed
After I've done the changes as you proposed I restarted the machine.
XP hung after restart so I had to do a reinstallation of the OS. After
reinstallation the system disk got the "c"-letter and the datadisk got
the "d" letter.
Great!
Regards
Kjell Arne
Kjell Arne Johansen
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 09.05.2002, 23:15:10, Parish <par...@NOSPAM.ntlworld.com> wrote
regarding Re: How do I change drive letter assignments in Windows XP?:
> JBR wrote:
> > It seems to me that there is a "Disks management" tool in the
> > "Administration tools" which allows you to change drive letters...
> >
> Except that it won't permit you to change the drive letters for the
> system or boot volumes.
> DONT'T!!! try the procedure detailed in Q233188 (quoted below). It is
> for restoring drive letters to their *original* settings only. Read the
Hi
Maybe I have been lucky then.
The OS hung after restart so I had to insert the installation disk to
repair the innstalled XP OS.
After reinstallatin everything worked fine.
Regards
Kjell Arne
Parish
If you call having to re-install the OS "lucky". OK, even though you can
do an in-place upgrade, which re-installs the OS over istself but leaves
personal settings and apps alone, you could still end up with apps not
running because all their registry entries refer to F: but now the files
are on C:.
> After reinstallatin everything worked fine.
>
Glad to hear it, although you could have lost a of of data. Did you do a
clean install and then have to install all your apps again?
On a more general note as there seems to be a large number (majority?)
of people here who have moved to NT (XP is NT5.1 and W2K is NT5) from
DOS (i.e. Win9x) for the first time, you must realize that NT is a whole
different barrel of worms to DOS/Win9x.
Although MS has gone to great lengths to make the front-end UI
consistent, underneath the OS is a quantum leap forward. As far as disks
are concerned, NT supports dynamic volumes, mirror sets, striped sets,
RAID, and is designed to be part of large networks (so you can map
network drives to drive letters).
All this makes the notion of drive letters out-dated, archaic, and
extremely problematical. Not least of which is that it is easy to run
out of letters!
Those from a DOS background are used to the first partition being C:,
the second D:, etc. but, as the many threads here on this subject show,
even that isn't always what happens under NT.
Consider another, quite likely, scenario: When you install NT, if you
have a FAT partition and some free space NT will detect the FAT and
"assume" that you have, or intend to have, a DOS-based OS. As these only
support one primary partition being visible and that you *may* make the
NT partition FAT as well, it tries to be helpful and makes the new NT
partition an extended one. What it doesn't do is ask you if that is OK
and give you a chance to change it. It doesn't even tell you that it has
done this.
It isn't a problem until you add a second disk and format it with a
primary partition. Due to the PC architecture the new disk becomes D:
and your NT partition becomes E:. Oops, now it won't boot, or if it does
your apps won't work. This is perhaps the only time the average user
would need to use the procedure in Q233188 although assuming NT boots
then simply changing the new drive to F: in Disk Manager and rebooting
may get the NT partition back to D: (you can then change the new drive
to E:).
Users new to NT have to adopt a pragmatic approach and get used to
"unusual" drive letter combinations.
> Regards
> Kjell Arne
>
>
>
Z
Z
"Kjell Arne Johansen" <kjel...@online.no> wrote in message
news:20020509...@mis.configured.host...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q223188
Great!
Regards
Kjell Arne