Zollex Posted July 21, 2019 Share Posted July 21, 2019 Hi! How can I change letter drive of XP? I need C and now is D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave-H Posted July 21, 2019 Share Posted July 21, 2019 You can't change it in Disk Management? I'm not sure if you can change the letter of the system drive there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VistaLover Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 2 hours ago, Dave-H said: I'm not sure if you can change the letter of the system drive there. ... NOT possible via Disk Management! 4 hours ago, Zollex said: How can I change letter drive of XP? I need C and now is D Your search engine of choice is usually your friend in cases like these... Possibly helpful: https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/changing-windows-system-drive-letter https://www.petri.com/change_system_drive_letter_in_windows_xp As stressed in the articles themselves, "make a full system backup of the computer and system state." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 Those links are bul***** (no fault of VistaLover of course ). In the end they are essentially these: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/223188/how-to-restore-the-system-boot-drive-letter-in-windows Which apply IF (and ONLY IF) the system was installed to C:\ and later - for whatever reason - the drive letter changed to - say - D:\. I.e. they are fine if you want to restore to C:\ a system installed to C:\ but they will NOT be enough in case the OS has been originally installed to D:\. BUT you won't be able to log in IF your install has a full path to userinit had FIRST followed this one: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/249321/unable-to-log-on-if-the-boot-partition-drive-letter-has-changed so you'd better check that first thing. See also: There are hundreds and thousands of references to the original driveletter to which the OS was installed in Registry (and in links, shortcuts, .ini settings and what not). It is possible to change a system drive letter, but it needs a lot of patience and the use of tools *like* good ol' COA2 and/or Registrar Lite (using plain Regedit would take forever). Basically you need to find - systemwide - each and every reference to D:\ and replace it with C:\, it is doable , but you MUST HAVE an image (or at least an accessible backup AND an alternate booting OS (like a PE) in case something goes wrong. In case you want to try, you need COA2: https://web.archive.org/web/20120321153256/http://digilander.libero.it/rareware/coa2.zip and Registrar Lite version 200: https://web.archive.org/web/20021201100858/http://www.resplendence.com/download https://web.archive.org/web/20021203063147/http://www.resplendence.com/ftp/reglite.exe jaclaz 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VistaLover Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 8 hours ago, jaclaz said: Those links are bul***** (no fault of VistaLover of course ). Well, actually "my" fault was my query arguments were simply worded as "change system drive letter" and the two links posted were harvested from only the first two result pages Google came up with... The original Microsoft help article you linked to uses the verb "restore", so that's probably why it was not suggested to me right away ... Once again, many thanks for a very erudite/informative post on the subject at hand! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 (edited) Yep, happy to have been of use , To be fair, there is a difference in the level of bul***** in the two articles. The difference is that once you read them the itprotoday is "honest", i.e. it is a report of something that happened and that in that particular case was actually a "restore", and misses the link to the userinit possible issue (as the Author didn't need it), whilst the petri one is (as often happens on that site) the usual attempt at "examplification to the masses" of something that by rewording it (without ever testing the method) is likely to induce the reader into committing a (very regrettable) mistake. Still, it has the link to the possible issue with userinit BUT without citing it in the text. So, on one hand the first is not so bad, as reading it, even if it is incomplete, it becomes clear that it applies to a specific situation, while the second is IMHO actually misleading, the : "For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed." should have been written as : "Do not EVEN THINK of doing this UNLESS you are in the specific case detailed in the linked MS KB" jaclaz Edited July 22, 2019 by jaclaz 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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