Drive letters

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Windows_Mike

When Vista is installed on the second partition it uses letter "C" and calls
the first partition letter "D". Of course changing system drive letters is a
pain is the a**. Anyone know if this is by design or a bug?

(I have WinMCE on the first partition)

-Mike
 
It's by design.
To avoid this and keep your drive letters constant, install Vista from
within XP.
dotcom
 
Windows_Mike said:
When Vista is installed on the second partition it uses letter "C" and
calls the first partition letter "D". Of course changing system drive
letters is a pain is the a**. Anyone know if this is by design or a bug?

(I have WinMCE on the first partition)

-Mike
Click to expand...

Each system assigns drive letters itself. These are not assigned by the
hardware and are not "hard-coded" anywhere.

Is there a particular reason for wanting to change the drive letter?
 
To change it from XP follow this:

Open Computer Management = Control Panel - Administratvie Tools - Computer
Management.

Once opened, on the left side go to Disk Management. Then just select wich
partition you want, right click it and select Change Drive Letter and Path...
 
new "FEATURE" with vista.
if you install booting from DVD it always STEALS "C" drive letter.
if you install from another another OS it retains standard drive lettering.

excuse is it looks at the BOOT sequence in the bios and presumes you want it to be "C".



(e-mail address removed)



When Vista is installed on the second partition it uses letter "C" and calls
the first partition letter "D". Of course changing system drive letters is a
pain is the a**. Anyone know if this is by design or a bug?

(I have WinMCE on the first partition)

-Mike
 
Yeah, I know it's not hard coded but traditionally partition 1 = C, 2 = D,
etc.

It's not a big deal, but every time I see C in windows explorer I think
that's the MCE partition before catching myself. (and, of course, since
they'll be reversed when I boot to MCE, there'd no hope of ever getting
"used" to it.

-Mike
 
Thanks DJ, but that doesn't work for system partitions (one's with OS's
installed on them)

It is possible to change the letter of a system drive/partition via the
registry, but all registry entries that refer to that drive by letter (and
ther's a lot even with just a base OS install) must also be changed. Like I
said, it can be done but it's a pain in the a**.

-Mike
 
I leave them alone. I cannot find any reason to care. There has never been
a fixed enumeration scheme anyway. Enumeration depends on a lot of things
and I am OK just letting each OS set up the way it wants to.
 
Yeah, it's really no big deal, but I have 2 drives and six partitions and
it's just nicer to have the drive letters be the same across the OS's. It's
not worth dealing with though; I'll just install Vista from within MCE next
time I do a fresh install.

I do think it should use D when it's on the second partition like 98, 2K,
XP, and 2K3 do, but it's no big deal; just one of those "little things" that
bugs me. I've always thought the way the first partition on a second drive
gets the letter following the install partition was unintuitive too, but
I've never had an OS installed there so it's always been easy to change.
I've always made my optical drives M and N as well (been doing it since the
DOS days) just an old (and somewhat quirky, I suppose) habit.

-Mike
 
Mike said:
Yeah, it's really no big deal, but I have 2 drives and six partitions and
it's just nicer to have the drive letters be the same across the OS's. It's
not worth dealing with though; I'll just install Vista from within MCE next
time I do a fresh install.
Click to expand...

Mike:

Personally, I like to see the OS always on C, because that is what I am
used to. That is one of the reasons I always would use a boot manager to
hide the different OS partitions from each other. You can use a separate
data partition that is seen by all the OS's.

David Wilkinson
 
I have a dual boot system that works fine with Windows XP. Operating system
is on Drive C and my Data is on Drive D- and Applications on Drive E. I
assigned VISTA OS Drive G under Windows XP.

With VISTA booted however, the Windows XP partition is assigned Drive D--
therefore my programs on Drive E that do not require a reinstall on VISTA
(i.e.registry entry) do not work since they look for data on Drive D, which
is now the inactive Windows XP directory.
Is there a way to assign Windows XP to any other drive letter thyan D?
 
Yes, you can fix it via the registry. Rather than type it all out, here's a
link to the instructions.

Your situation is somewhat unique since the OS with the problem letter isn't
booted when the problem is occurring. Therefore you only need to change the
drive letter in the registry and **not** all of the instances where that
partition is referenced by letter.

These instructions are for XP, but they should work in Vista.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/en-us

-Mike
 
Mike said:
Yeah, I know it's not hard coded but traditionally partition 1 = C, 2 = D,
etc.

It's not a big deal, but every time I see C in windows explorer I think
that's the MCE partition before catching myself. (and, of course, since
they'll be reversed when I boot to MCE, there'd no hope of ever getting
"used" to it.

-Mike
Click to expand...

It actually does become important in multiple drive situations, and when you
have backup servers or tape drives that target specific drive letters, but
that's beyond anything I do.

I have one suggestion: Name the drives for what they are. I have drives
named "XP x86 SP2 Home", "Data" and "Backup" among others. Keeps the
confusion down to a dull roar.
 
Well, glad I am not the only one. I installed from the DVD, picked the proper
partition (2) during setup and it trumped the drive letters and my partitions
look identical to the original poster. When in XP, partition 1 is C, when in
Vista, partition 2 is C.

The reason this is a problem, and could be of concern, is that for someone
like me, who regularly runs a dual boot, it can hose your original OS
programs when you go to install programs on the new OS. For example, as soon
as I got Vista running, I installed MS Office. It wanted to install it on
c:\program files\etc.. Sine XP is (so I thought) on C, I said, no, put it on
the D drive. Little did I know that it was going to overwrite MS Office on my
XP build since while in Vista, my XP build is D. It wasn't until after the
install that I realized it trumped my drive letters. I feel this is probably
a bug the MS needs to work out.
 
Well, glad I am not the only one. I installed from the DVD, picked the proper
partition (2) during setup and it trumped the drive letters and my partitions
look identical to the original poster. When in XP, partition 1 is C, when in
Vista, partition 2 is C.

The reason this is a problem, and could be of concern, is that for someone
like me, who regularly runs a dual boot, it can hose your original OS
programs when you go to install programs on the new OS. For example, as soon
as I got Vista running, I installed MS Office. It wanted to install it on
c:\program files\etc.. Sine XP is (so I thought) on C, I said, no, put it on
the D drive. Little did I know that it was going to overwrite MS Office on my
XP build since while in Vista, my XP build is D. It wasn't until after the
install that I realized it trumped my drive letters. I feel this is probably
a bug the MS needs to work out.
 
Have dual boot XP and Vista - Vista refers to itself on C, D under X. Have
installed programs via Vista to C, including Office 2007, and have had no
problems with programs via XP or Vista.
 
If you want to keep your original drive letters, then you need to install
Vista from XP. Vista will then install on the drive you indicate and keep
the original drive letter assignments from XP. If you install from a cold
boot using the Vista DVD then it is going to assume that it's drive should
be C.
 
That has been my experience also.

William

If you want to keep your original drive letters, then you need to install
Vista from XP. Vista will then install on the drive you indicate and keep
the original drive letter assignments from XP. If you install from a cold
boot using the Vista DVD then it is going to assume that it's drive should
be C.
 
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