7 can change the drive letter it's installed on on the fly

[GrofLuigi]

Installed on a primary partition (but not the first one) - dual boot.

After sorting out multiboot issues (verifying that XP was intact), I was left with slightly different drive letters than before and in 7's Disk Management, I tried to change the letter it's installed on to my liking* and couldn't believe my eyes when it worked without a glitch, after some waiting. Not a single registry error or similar.

If I were MicroSoft, I would tout this feature much more than stupid visual effects.

Alas, after some hours playing with the trial, I realized it's nothing more than a Vista SP2.1 and wiped it, ran out with screaming to buy some anti-bloat soap to wash my mouth. Sadly, there was none.   

* Don't remember exactly if it was F: to C: or vice versa, but I think both worked.

Bye.

GL

[jaclaz]

I tried to change the letter it's installed on to my liking* and couldn't believe my eyes when it worked without a glitch, after some waiting. Not a single registry error or similar.

Very, very interesting.

If I were MicroSoft, I would tout this feature much more than stupid visual effects.

Well, you'd have a more techical approach and far less money the good guys at MS have.

Gadgets, and stupid visual effects SELL.

Alas, after some hours playing with the trial, I realized it's nothing more than a Vista SP2.1 and wiped it, ran out with screaming to buy some anti-bloat soap to wash my mouth. Sadly, there was none.   

Yep, that's the reason why the stick approach is useful, how come you didn't use it this time?

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=125258&st=11

jaclaz

[DigeratiPrime]

It probably works because the active system volume is now a hidden 100 MB partition, which is actually assigned the letter C according to diskpart in WinPE. I wouldnt describe this as a feature, rather a side effect. Just my guess. BTW how would this be useful?

[Tripredacus]

It probably works because the active system volume is now a hidden 100 MB partition, which is actually assigned the letter C according to diskpart in WinPE. I wouldnt describe this as a feature, rather a side effect. Just my guess. BTW how would this be useful?

WinPE assigns it that letter. By default it has no drive letter. WinPE isn't too smart, because it will assign drive letters to anything it can when the system enumerates the volumes. That's why it also does things like assign letters to the USB Bus on some notebook models!

[jaclaz]

It probably works because the active system volume is now a hidden 100 MB partition, which is actually assigned the letter C according to diskpart in WinPE.

Installed on a primary partition (but not the first one) - dual boot.

jaclaz

[GrofLuigi]

Alas, after some hours playing with the trial, I realized it's nothing more than a Vista SP2.1 and wiped it, ran out with screaming to buy some anti-bloat soap to wash my mouth. Sadly, there was none.   

Yep, that's the reason why the stick approach is useful, how come you didn't use it this time?

http://www.msfn.org/...ic=125258&st=11

I was weak.   But I was healed pretty fast.   

It probably works because the active system volume is now a hidden 100 MB partition, which is actually assigned the letter C according to diskpart in WinPE.

Installed on a primary partition (but not the first one) - dual boot.

jaclaz

Yes, that's probably the reason, but I found it pretty amazing that it changed the drive letter from Windows itself, on the fly (not sure if it asked for reboot and/or did some work after the next reboot).

I can't check now, but I think it saw the C: partition with XP at install time, and it gave its partition the letter F:, so I wanted every installation to refer to itself as C: so I could "transplant" programs (copy them without installation).

My partitions were (as seen from XP):

C: (xp)

D: (data)

F: (win7)

After installation of 7, and when booted into 7, they were:

C: (xp)

D: (data)

F: (win7) (I think, maybe D: and F: were swapped)

I wanted to make them:

C: (win7)

D: (data)

F: (xp)

Maybe there was an extra step to rename another letter (D:), but I couldn't believe my eyes when it let me reassign the letter it was residing on and booted into.

No partition was ever hidden. 

GL

[jaclaz]

No partition was ever hidden. 

Yes, to clarify hopefully:

• When windows 7 is installed to an UNPARTITIONED disk, it's install creates a hidden 100Mb (was 200 Mb) partition "automagically".
  
• This DOES NOT happen if you install it on an already set up partition.
  

So it CANNOT be the reason.

jaclaz

[cannie]

Yes, to clarify hopefully:

• When windows 7 is installed to an UNPARTITIONED disk, it's install creates a hidden 100Mb (was 200 Mb) partition "automagically".
  
• This DOES NOT happen if you install it on an already set up partition.
  

So it CANNOT be the reason.

jaclaz

Just for the record:

I've just used a Windows 98 bootdisk containing fdisk (not the Microsoft version, but the freeware one for big HD) for partitioning a 300 GB HD in a Pavilion DV6 laptop. I divided it into three 50 GB primary partitions and another extended one also divided into three 50 GB logical units (not formatting any of them). Afterwards I installed Windows 7 64 bits into the first of the three primary partitions and formatted all other drives using the Windows file manager. The formatting process only took me a couple of minutes. My division has been totally respected and everything is OK.

cannie