Changing drive letters

[aceizace]

Hi there. Recently there was a problem with my computer, and they had to format the harddrive. Somehow they proceeded to assign it the drive letter F. This annoys me somewhat, and I'd like to change it back to C. I have Partition Magic 8, and I can see the change drive letter button, however it warns me that the system may not be able to boot if I change this. I am also concerned about all my shortcuts etc. Partition Magic 8 has something it calls Drive Mapper which you can use to update all the references (like shortcuts), but I'm presuming I would have to run that after changing the letter, and if my system doesn't boot then I don't stand much chance of doing that. How should I go about changing it? Is it likely that the system wont be able to boot? Thanks for the help. (My computer is running Windows XP)

[peanut]

I assume one of your other drives was found before your hard drive upon reinstallation such as a cd or dvd drive and it took the letter c. Unfortunately your boot drive letter cannot be changed. I know this because i just did the exact same thing. I took care of the problem by formatting again and disconnecting all other drives (including secondary hard drives) except the cd drive with the install disk in it before starting the format. Then once the format is complete you can plug in the other drives and change any letter you want to. (except the boot drive).

[dodgyshirt]

Open the control panel
Double click on Administrative Tools
Double click on Computer Managment
Click on Disk Management in the left window pane.
In the right window pane, right click on the drive letter (partition or volume) you want to be hidden.
Click on Change Drive Letter and Path...
Click the Remove button to hide the partition or volume
To add or alter drive letters use the Windows steps above except click the Add or Change buttons.

[aceizace]

Peanut: I'm not really sure why it changed to F, it was C, then the people in the shop "fixed" it, and all the letters were screwed up. Regarding formatting the drive, there's too much stuff on there for that. I know that I /can/ change the letter with Partition Magic, because it lets me, but it warns me that the computer /might/ not be able to boot afterwards. I just wanted to know if that was likely, or if the boot strap loader would detect that it had changed and try to load off another drive.

Dodgyshirt: Actually windows does not let you change the letter of your boot drive via this method, you need another application. Thanks anyway.

[peanut]

The computer assigns the letters to the drives in the order they are found. So im sorry but i think you are SOL if you dont want to format again. By the way what drive got the "c"?

[peanut]

Also, it may look as if windows will let you change it (your boot drive letter), at the final click it will tell you it cannot be changed.

[aceizace]

To be honest I can't remember what did get the C, I changed all the letters I could as soon as I realised. On my computer I have one hdd, one dvd drive, and two memory card slots. But rather than one of them getting it I think it's more likely that when it was being fixed they put another drive in and then took it out later. As far as I know the first harddrive is always given C.

I don't mean to sound like I'm questioning you here, but I find it extremely odd that my OS would just be fixed to loading from F permenantly unless I formatted the drive, especially since F is 3 letters away from C. The program I'm using lets me set it up, and puts the change in the 'operations pending' box. Admittedly I didn't click apply, but that was because I don't want to end up with a system that wont boot.

Theoretically, if I could forceably change the letter of the boot drive, would the booting program recognise that it had changed and load it off the new letter instead? I don't really know enough about it, except that BOOT.INI is something to do with it, and it doesn't actually say F in there, just multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1).