Windows won't let me change the BOOT drive letter. Also, E: is not used, by the way.
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How do I change boot drive letter after new drive install?
After installing a new hard drive, my boot drive letter on my CURRENT boot hard drive was changed from E: to C:
I can boot, but everything on drive points to E:>. How can I change the C:> back to E:>??? (Using Windows XP).
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Answers
Sorry about that, it's 4:30AM and I spaced the boot drive restriction.
The below is from Microsoft, but you are definitely taking a risk. This is the only way I know of, maybe another expert has a less risky method. Also, you may have to change environmental variables.
This article is for Windows 2000, but the same concepts apply to Windows XP. NOTE: Some user's have reported that this has rendered their system unbootable. Others have reported that it works.
If you follow this procedure, you do so at your own risk.
http://support.microsoft.c
Changing the System/Boot Drive Letter
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry
SUMMARY
This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter in Windows. For the most part, this is not recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do this is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention. This may happen when you break a mirror volume or there is a drive configuration change. This should be a rare occurrence and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation. NOTE: Please be aware of the following issue related to drive letters:
249321 Unable to Log on if the Boot Partition Drive Letter Has Changed
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
To change or swap drive letters on volumes that cannot otherwise be changed using the Disk Management snap-in, use the following steps.
NOTE: In these steps, drive D refers to the (wrong) drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the (new) drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume.
This procedure swaps drive letters for drives C and D. If you do not need to swap drive letters, simply name the \DosDevice\letter: value to any new drive letter not in use.
back to the top
Changing the System/Boot Drive Letter
Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
Log on as an Administrator.
Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Check to make sure Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\
Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.
NOTE: You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:". (This will free up drive letter C: to be used later.)
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.
Using a command line
Open Command Prompt.
Type:
diskpart
At the DISKPART prompt, type:
list volume
Make note of the number of the simple volume whose drive letter you want to assign, change, or remove.
At the DISKPART prompt, type:
select volume n
Select the volume, where n is the volume's number, whose drive letter you want to assign, change, or remove.
At the DISKPART prompt, type one of the following:
assign letter=L
Where L is the drive letter you want to assign or change.
remove letter=L
Where L is the drive letter you want to remove.
Value Description
list volume Displays a list of basic and dynamic volumes on all disks.
select volume Selects the specified volume, where n is the volume number, and shifts the focus to it. If no volume is specified, the select command lists the current volume with focus. You can specify the volume by number, drive letter, or mount point path. On a basic disk, selecting a volume also gives the corresponding partition focus.
assign letter=L Assigns a drive letter, L, to the volume with focus. If no drive letter is specified, then the next available drive letter is assigned. If the drive letter is already in use, an error is generated.
remove letter=L Removes the drive letter, L, from the volume with focus. If no drive letter or mount point is specified, then DiskPart removes the first drive letter or mount point it encounters.
The remove command can be used to change the drive letter associated with a removable drive. You cannot remove the drive letters on system, boot, or paging volumes. In addition, you cannot remove the drive letter for an OEM partition, any GPT partition with an unrecognized GUID, or any of the special, non-data, GPT partitions such as the EFI system partition.
Notes
To open command prompt, click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
You must be logged on as an administrator or a member of the Administrators group in order to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.
A computer can use up to 26 drive letters. Drive letters A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives, but you can assign these letters to removable drives if the computer does not have a floppy disk drive. Hard disk drives in the computer receive letters C through Z, while mapped network drives are assigned drive letters in reverse order (Z through B).
You cannot change the drive letter of the system volume or boot volume.
An error message may appear when you attempt to assign a letter to a volume, CD-ROM drive, or other removable media device, possibly because it is in use by a program in the system. If this happens, close the program accessing the volume or drive, and then click the Change Drive Letter and Paths command again.
Windows 2000 and Windows XP allow the static assignment of drive letters on volumes, partitions, and CD-ROM drives. This means that you permanently assign a drive letter to a specific partition, volume, or CD-ROM drive. When you add a new hard disk to an existing computer system, it will not affect statically assigned drive letters.
You can also mount a local drive at an empty folder on an NTFS volume using a drive path instead of a drive letter. For more information, click Related Topics.
For more information about DiskPart, click Related Topics.
Related Topics
Notes on successful change of boot drive letters:
After changing the boot drive letter in the registery from C: to E:, I rebooted. Windows XP froze at startup.
I rebooted again and same result. I then went into CMOS and told system to boot from CD ROM.
I remounted my original Windows XP Home CD and booted. I then told it to "repair" Windows. It said
it found Windows on C:\Windows, which I thus thought that the registry still had the old C: listed. However,
after reinstalling (repairing) Windows, it came up under E: and everything worked perfectly as it did before
the drive letter change! SO.......if you recommend this procedure, you might want to add these instructions!
Thanks for your help! I am back in business! Larry
pclarry, thanks for the reply. I was pretty hesitant about even posting that, but, from your posts, I got the feeling that you were knowledgable enough to understand the risks. I will be even more hesitant in suggesting this method in the future based on your results.
Thanks again for letting us know what happened
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by: zefiroPosted on 2003-08-12 at 04:15:00ID: 9129002
Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->Computer Management-->Disk Management-->Right Click on the shaded area of the drive-->Change Drive letter.
If another drive is already designated as E: you will have to change that to an unused drive letter first