[HKNewBi]

Hello

Reinstalled Windows and my partitioned hard disk, which was C & D drives has now become C and I drive, where c: drive is the old D: drive and the I: Drive is the old C: drive!!!

Anyone got any advice as to how I can make the I: drive back to the C: drive and the C: Drive back to the D: drive.

I don't want to format the old D: drive as it has all my data on and I would have to find somewhere to put over 200Gb. Happy to format the old C: drive (boot drive) as it only has my OS and Program files on.

I can't use the Disk Manager as it says can't change drive letters of system drives.

[FlamingToad]

If you are using WindowsXP you can easily reassign drive letters, but I would hesitate to reassign the boot partition. Windows might not like that, but I've never tried it before

There are many ways to do it, but here is the quickest and most straight forward way I know.

Right-click "My Computer" on your desktop and choose "Manage" from the resulting menu. In the new window that pops up the second item down is "Storage." Under that entry select "Disk Management." That will show you all the drives on your system. You may have an external drive, CD drive or a media card reader that is taking up your drive letters. I've had that problem before Right-click on the partition you wish to change and choose "Change drive letters and paths..."

Hope this helps

[HKNewBi]

Hi FlamingToad

Unfortunately not. As I put in my post 'I can't use the Disk Manager as it says can't change drive letters of system drives'. It simply won't let me do that.I have unplugged all my external drives, card readers etc to limit the number of drive letters used up.

I have managed to get the old c: drive to be the d: drive and the d: drive to be the c: drive, which is a real pain in the bum. I know this is going to cause me dataloss at some point in the future. I have been used to calling the primary boot partition the c: for 20 years now, going to be a hard habit to break.

Any other ideas?

Thanks

[discobay]

Format, unplug all other drives and reinstall Windows - it's the only way to be sure.

[HKNewBi]

You think formating the entire drive is the only way?

Unfortunately I have 150Gb+ on the data partitian that I would have to find somewhere to put it in the mean time.

It isn't critital data, hence not backed up, but seems a pain to have to buy another hdd only to get the drive letters the right way round.

Don't know how many times I have installed winders over the years, never seen this one before!

[discobay]

No just format the system partition and install Windows over it. Make sure no other drives are attached. When offered the blue screen of available partitions you should only see two - the system and the data.

[HKNewBi]

Hi Disco

That is what I did. On the blue partition screen it shows the two partitions, it shows the data partition as C: and the system as D:.

I deleted the D: partition and then even tried rebooting the machine to see if it still has the data partition as C: and it always does. So format the D: and install windows on there.

Can't get it to not make the old d: drive as the c: drive. Very frustrating.

[HKNewBi]

In the old days I would have booted using a DOS floppy and used FDisk to change the partitions around, but don't know if that can be done these days!

[JohanSWE]

you need to change the flag for the hard drive.
Dload the ultimateboot cd bin file (free) and burn to a cd.
Insert and reboot, choose Ranish to change the flag back to C:

Note that you need to reinstall windows once again if you do this.
You could try to copy all the content from your system drive to the C: drive first.. but im not 100% sure if that will work since it will most likely mess up the registry pointers.

[KnowItAll]

fdisk works just fine .... look for it on your windows xp cd.