Equalize drive letters in dual boot?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Frolek
  • Start date Start date
B

Bob Frolek

Drive 0 had English XP - C:, unassigned space.
Drive 1 had Data - D:, Archive - E:
DVD - F:
Installed Foreign XP to the unassigned space on Drive 0.

When I boot in English, the foreign XP shows as G:, so I have C D E F
G.
When I boot the foreign XP, the foreign XP shows as H, not G, so I have
C D E F H.

Anyone know if the foreign will still run if I change H to G using Disk
Manager?
 
Yes, I suspected as much. The interesting thing is, unless I overlooked
something, I had no choice in the matter -XP done it!

Indeed I was a little surprised to find that both systems were on
visible partitions in both languages. I´d anticipated an active C for
English with Foreign C hidden, and vice versa.

I suppose I could change letters and see what happens. Reformat in the
case of bad luck, reinstall and then hope for better luck next time.

Is there a possibility of making the change more smoothly via a disk
program like PartitionMagic?
 
Bob said:
Yes, I suspected as much. The interesting thing is, unless I overlooked
something, I had no choice in the matter -XP done it!

Indeed I was a little surprised to find that both systems were on
visible partitions in both languages. I´d anticipated an active C for
English with Foreign C hidden, and vice versa.

I suppose I could change letters and see what happens. Reformat in the
case of bad luck, reinstall and then hope for better luck next time.

Is there a possibility of making the change more smoothly via a disk
program like PartitionMagic?
Click to expand...


You can't change XP's drive letter, at least not the one that is
currently booted.

Yes a reinstall is needed but disconnect the other drive first. Also be
sure the other drive is *not* connected on the *first* boot of the new
install. XP writes permanent drive info into its registry on the first
boot of a new install and you don't want the other drive present at that
time. This should make both XP's appear as C: when they are booted
however other partitions may not be the same in both installs. But thats
OK because you can change any partition's drive letter except the
currently booted XP's partition. So with a little shuffling about you
can make all permanent partitions and fixed drives (CDs, DVDs etc.)
appear with the same drive letters in both XP's.

On the second boot *with* the other drive connected edit the boot.ini
file on whichever OS boots (it really doesn't matter if both will be
permanent) to include the other XP install to make a dual boot.

I just edit the boot.ini file myself and add what I want but I believe
this will also create a dual boot for you.

start/run/msconfig
boot.ini tab
click on 'check all boot paths'

If not someone please correct the above.

While in the msconfig utility you can also set which install is the
default and how to long to wait for a user to make a boot selection
before the default is automatically selected.

John
 
Did you have a USB drive plugged in when you installed the second
operating system perhaps?
 
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