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rlewistx

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change primary drive letter

My primary hard drive crashed and I am trying to setup my secondary drive as the primary drive.  I loaded windows XP on it when I originally formatted in just in case I needed it as a boot drive.  Somehow though I set the drive to the letter ‘F’.  Now, when it is my primary drive the boot drive is letter ‘F’.  I tried to reset it to ‘C’ drive by using control panel>computer management>disk management, but when I highlight it, right click and choose “change drive letter”  then choose “change”, I GET THE MESSAGE “Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume” error.  I tried using FDISK from windows ME but it didn’t let me change the letter.  Any way I can do this without booting it up as a slave in another computer?

Thanks.
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Also edit the boot.ini

Editing the boot.ini File
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/ddtools/hh/ddtools/bootini_4elv.asp

To edit the boot.ini file in Notepad

Start Windows Explorer. Go to Tools | Folder Options | View. Make sure that Show Hidden Files and Folders is selected, and Hide File Extension for Known File Types is cleared.
Go to the root directory of the boot volume of your computer (on single-boot machines, usually C:\). Right-click on boot.ini. Select Properties, and remove the read-only attribute of this file. Click OK.
Double-click the file icon to start Notepad with boot.ini loaded.
If you are using an MS-DOS® Command Prompt window, use the following commands instead of steps 1, 2, and 3:
c:
cd \
attrib -s -h -r boot.ini
notepad boot.ini

Edit the file. (For a description of the boot.ini syntax, see Contents of the boot.ini File.)
Save the boot.ini file and quit Notepad. (You do not have to restore the original file attributes.)
Shut down the computer and restart Windows.


so it reads something like this multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

only if XP is on the first partition. Otherwise none of this will work.
Doing a Repair actually may be the best way around this.

Repair
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

Visual aid to the above procedure
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
Click on How To Run a Repair Install

You May Lose Data or Program Settings After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312369

Data Loss May Occur After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312368
And this is assuming that the drive XP is on is the primary and not the secondary and it is on the first partition on the drive.