Forcing assign the selected letter to the system partition of Windows

[egrabrych]

Of course, I know that there are programs which do it correctly and then the problem described below no longer occurs.

 

But my interest is in the case where as a result of using a program which doesn’t do it fully correctly (I’m thinking of Partition Magic here) the problem described below did occur. I’m interested in a solution to the problem other than repeating the cloning operation using a “better” program!

 

And the said problem is as follows: I decided to move all my files from an old, worn out disk to a new one. Including the system partition of Windows XP (in my PC it’s primary FAT32 – but that’s probably not important). Started in Windows XP, Partition Magic copied all existing partitions onto the new disk without any problems. However, an attempt to start Windows XP from the new disk resulted in failure, because the system partition was assigned a different letter than on the old disk (on the old one it was D; on the new one it was N).

 

I know that if I forced Partition Magic not to assign a letter to the new system partition, and then tried to start Windows XP (from the new disk) in the situation where none of the partitions had the letter D assigned, D would get assigned automatically to the new system partition and Windows XP would start. But, is there any program, run outside Windows, which can enforce assigning a chosen letter to the Windows system partition? I searched through the capabilities of programs run from UBCD 5.33 but I haven’t been able to find anything of the sort.

[jaclaz]

You need to edit a couple of values in the (offline) Registry.

 

Letter assignment depends on the values inside the key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

 

You need to edit \DosDevices\N: name, renaming it to \DosDevices\D: (if already a \DosDevices\D: value exists, you need to first rename this to a drive letter that doesn't exists, let's say \DosDevices\Z:) first.

 

In UBCD there is PCregedit which should do nicely.

 

jaclaz

[egrabrych]

This is what it is about:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en

 

That article was probably written mainly for Windows 2000, but the entries in Windows XP Registry and their meaning are in fact the same.

 

I’ve tried previously to use PC Regedit for other purposes, and so I will try to use it for this purpose as well .

[jaclaz]

Sure XP is 2K (with mainly some bells and whistles added to it), but the method/approach is the same possibly since NT 3.5 and however hasn't changed in up to 8.x (and possibly even the stupid 10 won't be different).

 

jaclaz