Cannot assign drive letter

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G

Guest

My boot drive became so corrupted that I was forced to reformat and reinstall
XP Home.

In the Computer Management Console I am able to see the secondary drive
(which has all of my backups) but am unable to assign a drive letter to it.
The only option available is to delete the partition.

What needs to be done in order to assign the drive letter?

Thx
 
Go to run,type:diskmgmt.msc In msc L.click the partition or hd,go to
actions,
all,select "make drive active" close out.Then with it L.clicked,go to
actions,
select "change drive letter"
 
Setting a primary partition active has nothing to do with a volume being visible
or not. That only sets a flag in the partition tables to tell the MBR boot loader
which partition boot sector to load. Freezer apparently has no trouble booting to
Windows.
 
[WAG] Did you by any chance have Goback (of NSW) installed on the
original XP install?
 
Did you change the user name during the reinstall ? There may be a file ownership conflict if you
did. Google for "Taking file ownership" and I think it has something to do with coming up in safe
maode and giving permissions to the user for the drive.
 
Bill Blanton said:
[WAG] Did you by any chance have Goback (of NSW) installed on the
original XP install?


Freezer said:
My boot drive became so corrupted that I was forced to reformat and reinstall
XP Home.

In the Computer Management Console I am able to see the secondary drive
(which has all of my backups) but am unable to assign a drive letter to it.
The only option available is to delete the partition.

What needs to be done in order to assign the drive letter?

Thx
Click to expand...


Yes, Goback was on the original installation of the secondary drive. Am I hosed?
Click to expand...
 
Freezer said:
Bill Blanton said:
[WAG] Did you by any chance have Goback (of NSW) installed on the
original XP install?


Freezer said:
My boot drive became so corrupted that I was forced to reformat and reinstall
XP Home.

In the Computer Management Console I am able to see the secondary drive
(which has all of my backups) but am unable to assign a drive letter to it.
The only option available is to delete the partition.

What needs to be done in order to assign the drive letter?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yes, Goback was on the original installation of the secondary drive. Am I hosed?
Click to expand...

Goback moves the partition tables out of the MBR and puts one table entry
defining a GoBack "type" partition, spanning the whole disk. It also replaces
the standard MBR loader code with its own. The GB loader code is needed
to "find" the original tables.

I've seen it reported that reinstalling GB has worked in this situation. However,
I've never tried it, so proceed at your own risk. If possible, clone the whole disk to
another of equal or greater size beforehand.
 
Bill Blanton said:
Freezer said:
Bill Blanton said:
[WAG] Did you by any chance have Goback (of NSW) installed on the
original XP install?


My boot drive became so corrupted that I was forced to reformat and reinstall
XP Home.

In the Computer Management Console I am able to see the secondary drive
(which has all of my backups) but am unable to assign a drive letter to it.
The only option available is to delete the partition.

What needs to be done in order to assign the drive letter?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yes, Goback was on the original installation of the secondary drive. Am I hosed?
Click to expand...

Goback moves the partition tables out of the MBR and puts one table entry
defining a GoBack "type" partition, spanning the whole disk. It also replaces
the standard MBR loader code with its own. The GB loader code is needed
to "find" the original tables.

I've seen it reported that reinstalling GB has worked in this situation. However,
I've never tried it, so proceed at your own risk. If possible, clone the whole disk to
another of equal or greater size beforehand.
Click to expand...

Just to add.. it doesn't matter where (drive/volume) it is installed.
 
Bill Blanton said:
Bill Blanton said:
Freezer said:
:

[WAG] Did you by any chance have Goback (of NSW) installed on the
original XP install?


My boot drive became so corrupted that I was forced to reformat and reinstall
XP Home.

In the Computer Management Console I am able to see the secondary drive
(which has all of my backups) but am unable to assign a drive letter to it.
The only option available is to delete the partition.

What needs to be done in order to assign the drive letter?
Click to expand...
Yes, Goback was on the original installation of the secondary drive. Am I hosed?
Click to expand...

Goback moves the partition tables out of the MBR and puts one table entry
defining a GoBack "type" partition, spanning the whole disk. It also replaces
the standard MBR loader code with its own. The GB loader code is needed
to "find" the original tables.

I've seen it reported that reinstalling GB has worked in this situation. However,
I've never tried it, so proceed at your own risk. If possible, clone the whole disk to
another of equal or greater size beforehand.
Click to expand...

Just to add.. it doesn't matter where (drive/volume) it is installed.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sending me in the right direction.

It turns out that GoBack modifies the MBR so that XP isn't able to access
the disk.

Symantec has a utility called NGBBoot.ico that will allow you to unhook
GoBack from the MBR.

All is well now.
 
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