Drive Letter Problem

[RareToy]

Hello,

I have come across a bizzare situtation, and I'd appreciate all the help I can get with it.

The new computer has two physical harddrives (Drive 0 and Drive 1), both with a single primary partition. C: containing a Windows XP Home installation and D: as a single primary partition for data.

The owner wanted to take the harddrive from their old underpowered computer (also an XP Home installation) and dump it's harddrive onto the D: of the new one.

So with the help of Partition Magic 8, they made room on the new computers drive 1 by shrinking D: down to just a little over the data stored onto it (about 600megs).

Then they used Drive Image 2002 to copy the old computer's drive into this newly created unallocated space.

Unknown to the user, by doing this, Drive Image hid the C: on the new computer to do the transfer. They didn't realize that it was hidden and booted the new computer. This made the second partition on Drive 1 , C:. The user realized the error when the wrong wallpaper came up. Then they unhid the drive 0, XP labled it as drive G:.

Is there a way to trick XP to change that G: back to C: ? If you just unplug the second harddrive in the new system, the system will only boot up to the welcome screen and then just hangs. I take it's trying to get to C: for system files instead of using what's on drive 0 (G:). I don't know which registry the system is using. But when I boot the system and go into the registry, there are references to the C: drive as well as the G: drive's windows directory.

Any thoughts/ideas/tools would be helpful.

[Yzöwl]

I don't think you can change the boot or system drive letter in the following manner, but here goes for a try.

Right Click on My Computer, select Manage, click on Disk Management in the left hand pane. Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.

[RareToy]

Nope. Not on your boot volume. Can't do that.

Thanks anyways.

[Tsunami]

What's the end goal of this? to remove drive 0? if so, you'll probably have to remove drive 0 before copying the data to drive 1.

[prathapml]

Well, now there is no such thing as C:, D:, G: etc. by itself. It is all relative drive-letter assignments, with respect to what partition you are booting from.

Now, if you used PartitionMagic 8.x to set the (what is currently) G: drive as the active partition, it will become C: again. And then PartitionMagic has tools to assist in data-migration of the sort you describe - just use the add-on for that, to convert all references to G: to C: (but *PLEASE* do it carefully, because probably what is currently your C: might become G:).

[RareToy]

Due to the hiding and unhiding of partitions, the C: drive became G: The end goal is to get drive 0 back to C: instead of the current letter of G:.

Drive 1 can be wiped completely of all letters, but that's no garuntee G: will become C: again. Even if drive 1 was removed and drive 0 was jumpered to single drive only.

I was hoping there might be a technique out there (either via recovery console or such) that could switch it.

[RareToy]

*Possible solution found*

Thaks to a very nice Microsoftee, I was pointed to this URL for a possible solution to this problem : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/EN-US

Thank you to everyone who gave this problem thought/advise.