Drive letters reversed - boots wrongly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Terry Pinnell
  • Start date Start date
T

Terry Pinnell

I'll keep this as brief as possible. After using Drive Image
(carefully, I thought) to copy my system drive C to a partition of
identical size on an identical second hard disk, my drive letters have
now been scrambled! C is E and E is C. So by default XP is booting
into the 'copied' version, the one without all my software installed,
my broadband, etc. (And presumably all my hundred of shortcuts screwed
up.)

This is what the setup NOW looks like:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/Mess1.gif

And this is what it SHOULD look like (as it did a few hours ago):
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif

Can someone step me through how I can get these drive letters returned
to their former state please?

BTW, I have Drive Image 2002 and PM 7.0, as well as whatever
facilities are offered by XP Home itself with Disk Management.

All help and advice will be warmly appreciated please.
 
Terry Pinnell said:
I'll keep this as brief as possible. After using Drive Image
(carefully, I thought) to copy my system drive C to a partition of
identical size on an identical second hard disk, my drive letters have
now been scrambled! C is E and E is C. So by default XP is booting
into the 'copied' version, the one without all my software installed,
my broadband, etc. (And presumably all my hundred of shortcuts screwed
up.)

This is what the setup NOW looks like:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/Mess1.gif

And this is what it SHOULD look like (as it did a few hours ago):
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/XPDiskMgmt.gif

Can someone step me through how I can get these drive letters returned
to their former state please?

BTW, I have Drive Image 2002 and PM 7.0, as well as whatever
facilities are offered by XP Home itself with Disk Management.

All help and advice will be warmly appreciated please.
Click to expand...

This is an operating system question best asked of the OS newsgroups.
The hardware doesn't assign drive letters.

To change the drive letters, run: diskmgmt.msc
 
I'll keep this as brief as possible. After using Drive Image
(carefully, I thought) to copy my system drive C to a partition of
identical size on an identical second hard disk, my drive letters have
now been scrambled! C is E and E is C. So by default XP is booting
into the 'copied' version, the one without all my software installed,
my broadband, etc. (And presumably all my hundred of shortcuts screwed
up.)
Click to expand...

This works for win 2000, so I'm hoping XP is the same:

1. Open regedit, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

2. You'll see a heap of things like "\DosDevices\C:", "\DosDevices\E:", etc.

3. Rename \DosDevices\C: to \DosDevices\Z:

4. Rename \DosDevices\E: to \DosDevices\C:

5. Rename \DosDevices\Z: to \DosDevices\E:

Now reboot your PC.

Regards,
Chris
 
Skeleton Man said:
This works for win 2000, so I'm hoping XP is the same:

1. Open regedit, and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

2. You'll see a heap of things like "\DosDevices\C:", "\DosDevices\E:", etc.

3. Rename \DosDevices\C: to \DosDevices\Z:

4. Rename \DosDevices\E: to \DosDevices\C:

5. Rename \DosDevices\Z: to \DosDevices\E:

Now reboot your PC.
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris, but I'm not brave enough after all the mess I've managed
to get into! Also, I did find that hack via googling, and some say it
is a bit risky and unsupported by MS.

But, my nervousness aside, I feel I'm tantalisingly close now. Yet
possibly misunderstanding something fundamental. Perhaps you or
someone else here can help me get my mind around it please, although
it is admittedly an OS issue not hardware.

This 'system' to which I'm presently booted, in which I'm composing
this message, is called 'XP Home Edition #2'. That's what appears in
the drop-down box I've since discovered at XP System
Properties>Advanced>Startup & Recovery>Settings>System Startup.
And it's the line that was selected by default for a few seconds
during the last boot up process.

In XP Disk Mgmt I see this:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/AnotherBootOption.gif
So that seems to confirm that I'm in C.
Note the annotation 'Boot' against C.

BUT I don't follow why C is now shown on HD2 ?? I want it to be on
HD1, where it was until I copied C (on HD1) to E (on HD2). IOW, I want
C to always mean the physical partition on HD 1, and I want it to be
my normal 'system'. Only in an emergency, or to experiment, would I
want to boot up to the alternative system, which I copied to E.

Now, I'll save this post while I reboot to the other option.

-------

OK, I've done that. In XP Disk Mgmt I see this:
http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/OneBootOption.gif

The arrangement here is the one I've become used to over the last
couple of years.

BUT it shows that E is now 'Active'. Why not 'Boot' BTW?
And, the files I found under the C:\ path while in the other system
are now under E:\. Anyway, I am now thoroughly confused!

Can anyone suggest a simple, risk-free way of getting to what had
please?
 
Can anyone suggest a simple, risk-free way of getting to what had
please?
Click to expand...

Backup the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices section of your registry
and follow my above hack.
It's not microsoft supported, but I have done it several times on 3
different PC's to get drive letter assignments right on multi-boot systems
(I tend only to post previous tried and tested methods). If you backup the
registry first, you can put it back how it was before you changed anything
(should you need to).

Being boot/system drives, there is no MS solution that's gonna let you
change them..

Regards,
Chris
 
Skeleton Man said:
Backup the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices section of your registry
and follow my above hack.
It's not microsoft supported, but I have done it several times on 3
different PC's to get drive letter assignments right on multi-boot systems
(I tend only to post previous tried and tested methods). If you backup the
registry first, you can put it back how it was before you changed anything
(should you need to).

Being boot/system drives, there is no MS solution that's gonna let you
change them..
Click to expand...

Thanks for the follow-up, Chris. That's reassuring, so I may well do
it later today (taking a copy of that registry key first). I'm holding
back for a couple of remaining reasons:

1). I can't grasp what that might do to all my hundreds of shortcuts?
Right now, everything works fine. It's just as if I was back in the
state I was in before, as I want to be.

2). A post I had this morning in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
said:
"The current OS partition always shows up as Boot.
Active means bootable. The active part that booted shows up as System,
and other ones as Active."

From that, it may be that I'm already there!

But I find it all very counter-intuitive, so can you bear with
me while I try to explain again what I'm trying to do please.

I've booted to XP Home Edition, the 'first' of my 2 multi-boot
options. This is what my system looks like according to XP Disk
Management:

http://www.terrypin.dial.pipex.com/Misc/Sep12-XP.gif

From that, how can I tell definitively what partition I am 'running
in'?

BTW, both Drive Image 2002 and Partition Manager 7.0 just show both C
and E as 'Active', no distinction.

My interpretation before the post above was that I'm 'in' E, instead
of C where I want to be. That was based on seeing that 'Active'
annotation XP shows against E. But it now seems I was mistaken, and
I'm 'in' C after all, yes? No?

Why do I care? That's because I want to be back in the same state I've
been in for the last 2 years. C was exclusively my system and boot
partition. No E involved at all. E was just sitting patiently on my
2nd HD until some emergency (or experiment) prompted me to boot to it
instead. So, as I didn't normally use the files on F either, only my
1st HD would actually be being accessed. The 2nd HD (XP calls it Disk
1 to confuse me) would just be spinning passively for most of the
time. That's a mental picture with which I'm comfortable!

So, bottom line: can anyone tell me if I'm already back in the
required state, or whether I still need to do something
clever/complex/risky?
 
I've booted to XP Home Edition, the 'first' of my 2 multi-boot
options. This is what my system looks like according to XP Disk
Management:

From that, how can I tell definitively what partition I am 'running
in'?
Click to expand...

Active simply means that partition is marked as the one to boot on that
disk.
In the display above, "System" means the partition you're running windows
from.

My fix was only if the drive letters were still wrong.. if they're correct
now then obviously don't touch it..

Regards,
Chris
 
Skeleton Man said:
Active simply means that partition is marked as the one to boot on that
disk.
In the display above, "System" means the partition you're running windows
from.

My fix was only if the drive letters were still wrong.. if they're correct
now then obviously don't touch it..

Regards,
Chris
Click to expand...

Thanks for that prompt and reassuring reply. That sound good! So I
*am* already where I want to be! I was placing more weight on the word
'Active' than it deserved. Thank you for your patience.
 
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