diskpart / Documents and Settings predicament

[natedawg]

I've run into problems moving my 'C:\Documents and Settings' folder to 'D:\Settings'. The problem is that I have 3 partitions: Windows' initial drive letters aren't what I want, and changing the drive letters causes problems because you have to reboot when you've only changed one drive, and it can't find 'D:\Settings' any longer. My crude workaround (more like workthrough) follows:

1. Copy D:\Settings to E:\Settings
   
2. diskpart select volume=D
   
3. diskpart assign letter=P (note: letter 'D' is still taken since the drive is in use)
   
4. At this point I reboot, the Settings folder cannot be found and I get lots of errors. Eventually it loads and I...
   
5. diskpart select volume=E
   
6. diskpart assign letter=D (note: 'noerr' flag doesn't help)
   
7. Finally Windows works again, but I have this terrible feeling it will never forgive me.
   

Besides the obvious, I'm afraid this solution doesn't works well because: When I reboot without 'D:\Settings'--and when I run Windows for the first time--a 'Personalizing' window pops up and does Themes Setup among a few other things. I used nLite. Does that mean it's reapplying all the first run setup stuff (regedits etc)?

I've had a few ideas of how this might be better solved, but they're incomplete. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction?

1. Performing the steps listed at MSKB twice, once to map it to E and then after the reboot back to D. Inefficient.
   
2. Perhaps plant a batch file somewhere (in the installed WinXP) that can do steps 5 & 6 before Windows realizes it can't find the folder?
   
3. Dos(?) boot so that the partitions/folder isn't in use, and I can copy and re-letter before returning to windows. I don't know how to get started on this, though (not even what to research).
   
4. Remapping the drives in the installer & on first boot, in windows? Seems somewhat unfeasible.
   

Ideally the drives could be re-lettered automatically with the unattended installer.. but I'll settle for less.

Any ideas at all?

[IcemanND]

First, how are you partitioning your drives so that the lettering is not as desired?

second, you have a couple of possible options.

1. Use WinPE and partition and format before performing the installation.

2. run a diskpart script from DettachedProgram to partition and format the rest of the drive. (may cause a roblem depending upon you cd drive letter(s))

[natedawg]

My single hard drive, in order:

1. 010GB Windows
   
2. 002GB Pagefile (Logical)
   
3. 267GB Data (Logical)
   

Windows just assigns the drives in the order they appear on the HDD. (The pagefile was put before the data partition because that should be better performing, I figured)

I specifically keep a Windows partition so that I don't have to format my entire drive every time I want to reinstall Windows. My Data/Everything partition has about 255GB of movies, music, code, downloads, and I keep it all very organized.

If I used DetachedProgram to change the disk letters in WinPE. Ordinarily this doesn't transfer to XP does it? Is there any way to do that?

[natedawg]

OF COURSE! It just hit me and now I realize this was what you must've been getting at.

All I have to do is delete my pagefile partition before installing Windows. My data drive becomes D, and I can format the empty space into a pagefile partition once its done, and assign it any letter I want.

Thanks for the help, quite the community going on here.