Hard Drive Letter Changed On Their Own

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve
  • Start date Start date
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Steve

I have a older Dell (Pentium II) running XP. It has two
Western Digital HDs. My C: drive (the boot drive) has
been recently rebuilt and XP PRO was installed. The D:
was reformatted at the same time and currently only has
recovered files and no operating system. Last night
everything was working fine. The computer was up and
running through the night. This morning when I came in to
use it I had an error message saying INVALID SYSTEM DISK
REPLACE THE DISK AND HIT ENTER. I rebooted with a
floppy. I thought my C: died and it was trying to boot to
the D:. I was partially right. When I booted to the A:
prompt and checked, my D: was now listed as my C: and my
C: is now listed as my D:. I have Norton Internet
Security running so I don't think someone gained access to
my computer over my DSL line. Any suggestions on what
happened, and more importantly is there a way to switch
the letters back? (I thought about disconnecting the hard
drive now listed as C: and seeing if the system would once
again start recognizing the actual boot drive, but I
thought I would see if there was an easier (e.g. software)
method for making the switch.). Thanks for any help.

Steve
 
Depending how your boot disk was set up, if the booting XP partition was
formated with NTFS, then no normal boot diskette will be able to see that
partition.

Y.
 
Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management. Look for, and
expand Storage. Disk Management, then right click on drive to alter.

himon
 
Steve said:
I have a older Dell (Pentium II) running XP. It has two
Western Digital HDs. My C: drive (the boot drive) has
been recently rebuilt and XP PRO was installed. The D:
was reformatted at the same time and currently only has
recovered files and no operating system. Last night
everything was working fine. The computer was up and
running through the night. This morning when I came in to
use it I had an error message saying INVALID SYSTEM DISK
REPLACE THE DISK AND HIT ENTER. I rebooted with a
floppy. I thought my C: died and it was trying to boot to
the D:. I was partially right. When I booted to the A:
prompt and checked, my D: was now listed as my C: and my
C: is now listed as my D:. I have Norton Internet
Security running so I don't think someone gained access to
my computer over my DSL line. Any suggestions on what
happened, and more importantly is there a way to switch
the letters back? (I thought about disconnecting the hard
drive now listed as C: and seeing if the system would once
again start recognizing the actual boot drive, but I
thought I would see if there was an easier (e.g. software)
method for making the switch.). Thanks for any help.

Steve
Click to expand...

Did your BIOS get reset somehow? In my BIOS I can
change which hard drive to boot from and that one
shows as the C: drive. Or you could try swapping the
IDE cables between the drives.
 
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