How change drive letters back after Vista install

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zoot
  • Start date Start date
Z

Zoot

When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition it
was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G partition,
and that is where I wanted it. It won't let me change my drive letters back
the way I want them. Is there any way to install Vista on what would
normally be the G partition without it renaming it to C? I have XP64 on C,
XP32 on E, but when I boot to Vista my drive letters are all different and
it is an annoynance to switch to a different OS and have my drive letters
changed.
 
Zoot said:
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition
it was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G
partition, and that is where I wanted it. It won't let me change my drive
letters back the way I want them. Is there any way to install Vista on
what would normally be the G partition without it renaming it to C? I have
XP64 on C, XP32 on E, but when I boot to Vista my drive letters are all
different and it is an annoynance to switch to a different OS and have my
drive letters changed.
Click to expand...

I think it's the way Vista does things. XP will still see its drive as C
when you boot up, not sure if it's a requirement for Vista to have it's
drive seen as C as well. Nothing is going to hurt the system anyways or the
OS that they are installed on said partition/drives. Only one I can think
of is installing programs on one drive that shares with all three OS's but
then you only need to change that drive and reinstall stuff again and put
said drive/partition as Z or another latter drive letter.

Vista is on G, it just shows up on the desktop as C. Nothing has been
changed, it's just the way Vista handles things really.
 
Hi,

Once installed, no there's no way to change it. Vista, by default, will
always use C: as the designated letter for its boot volume. The only
exception to this I'm aware of is if the install is started from within an
existing XP/Win2K installation on C: using the custom install option to
direct it to another volume.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
Zoot said:
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition
it was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G
partition, and that is where I wanted it. It won't let me change my drive
letters back the way I want them. Is there any way to install Vista on
what would normally be the G partition without it renaming it to C? I have
XP64 on C, XP32 on E, but when I boot to Vista my drive letters are all
different and it is an annoynance to switch to a different OS and have my
drive letters changed.
Click to expand...


Supposedly changing the drive letter is technically possible, albeit a
labour of Hercules. Word has it that there would be thousands of items in
the registry to change etc. etc. I would venture any attempt would result in
mistakes and a shaky unstable system. IMHO, just forgo it [as dirve letters
don't mean much in themselves] or re-do your computer with a clean install
[if you really want it changed].

Saucy
 
Saucy said:
Zoot said:
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that
partition it was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this
would be the G partition, and that is where I wanted it. It won't
let me change my drive letters back the way I want them. Is there
any way to install Vista on what would normally be the G partition
without it renaming it to C? I have XP64 on C, XP32 on E, but when I
boot to Vista my drive letters are all different and it is an
annoynance to switch to a different OS and have my drive letters
changed.
Click to expand...


Supposedly changing the drive letter is technically possible, albeit a
labour of Hercules. Word has it that there would be thousands of items in
the registry to change etc. etc. I would venture any attempt would
result in mistakes and a shaky unstable system. IMHO, just forgo it [as
dirve letters don't mean much in themselves] or re-do your computer
with a clean install [if you really want it changed].
Click to expand...


I really do not know why he wants it as G:, but if he really wants it like
that, he could always use...

SUBST G: C:\

...in a logon script.

He can then hide C: in My Computer by editing the registry in the same way
that TweakUI would do when hiding a drive, which would not take long to find
out about.

ss.
 
Skipaiotter said:
I think it's the way Vista does things. XP will still see its drive as C
when you boot up, not sure if it's a requirement for Vista to have it's
drive seen as C as well. Nothing is going to hurt the system anyways or
the OS that they are installed on said partition/drives. Only one I can
think of is installing programs on one drive that shares with all three
OS's but then you only need to change that drive and reinstall stuff again
and put said drive/partition as Z or another latter drive letter.

Vista is on G, it just shows up on the desktop as C. Nothing has been
changed, it's just the way Vista handles things really.
Click to expand...

I know it doesn't hurt anything - it just annoys me. Win2000/2003 and XP
don't do this. It seems to be something new with Vista.

I keep certain files on D:, others on F:, and still others on E:. When I
boot to Vista, it has changed the drive letters around and won't let me
change them the way Win2000/XP32/XP64 see them.
 
Zoot said:
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition
it was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G
partition,
Click to expand...

Why?
 
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition it
was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G partition,
and that is where I wanted it. It won't let me change my drive letters back
the way I want them. Is there any way to install Vista on what would
normally be the G partition without it renaming it to C? I have XP64 on C,
XP32 on E, but when I boot to Vista my drive letters are all different and
it is an annoynance to switch to a different OS and have my drive letters
changed.
Click to expand...
Try the procedure described in the last post at
<http://www.vistax64.com/vista-insta...vista-64-dual-boot-changing-drive-letter.html>.
 
Gordon said:
Why?
Click to expand...

Why? No prior Microsoft OS does this. All other version of Windows retain
the natural drive letter ordering. I'm guessing because Microsoft made an
arbitrary decision to change Vista to do this. Why? Because they can. Why?
Because there are not enough people like me that complain about it. Why?
Because to Microsoft, all you drive letters belong to us and we will do what
we damn well want to whether you like it or not. Why? Because they are
Microsoft.
 
Saucy said:
Zoot said:
When I installed Vista, it changed the drive letters such that partition
it was installed on was the "C" drive. Normally, this would be the G
partition, and that is where I wanted it. It won't let me change my drive
letters back the way I want them. Is there any way to install Vista on
what would normally be the G partition without it renaming it to C? I
have XP64 on C, XP32 on E, but when I boot to Vista my drive letters are
all different and it is an annoynance to switch to a different OS and
have my drive letters changed.
Click to expand...


Supposedly changing the drive letter is technically possible, albeit a
labour of Hercules. Word has it that there would be thousands of items in
the registry to change etc. etc. I would venture any attempt would result
in mistakes and a shaky unstable system. IMHO, just forgo it [as dirve
letters don't mean much in themselves] or re-do your computer with a clean
install [if you really want it changed].

Saucy
Click to expand...

I did it with Win98 once, but it's a time consuming risky process. I would
not bother with anything newer then that. But what I want to do is not
change it, I want it to retain the natural drive lettering and recognize G:
as G: like Win98/2000/XP do.
 
We are probably not talking about the same thing :). With all MS operating
systems prior to Vista (and possibly server 2008, I have a copy of it but
have never installed it), installing the OS on any non-C: partition would
work and the OS would retain the natural ordering of the drive letters. I
know this from many years of experience: XP installed on E: knows it is on
E:. Win2000 on D: knows it is on D:. Both retain the natural lettering order
of the drives unless you do something to change it. Vista, however, changes
this. Vista on G: renames the drive to C:, which changes the drive letters
of some of the other drives as well.

To clarify, as I'm sure you all know, drive letters are virtual and specific
to a running instance of an OS. Partitions themselves do not have letter
identifiers, the OS assigns these and they exist only as long as the OS is
running.
 
Gordon said:
No, Why, do you want the OS partition to be G?
Click to expand...

In this case, G: happens to be an unused partition, and a good place to
stick Vista.

I keep certain types of files on different partitions. My data goes on D:.
Certain archival and all games go on F:. Certain utilities are always found
on C:. E: is used as a backup for critical data files, and is also where I
have XP32 installed. Q: is for temp files that I don't care what happens to.
I used to keep certain types of non-critical files on G:, but about a year
ago I combined F: and G: because I bought a 750GB drive and now I have room
for all of this stuff on one partition.

When I boot to a different OS, I want my drive letters to be the same. When
I boot to XP64, XP32, and Win2000, all of the drive letters are the same.
Everything is where I expect it. Vista changes all of that. It annoys me. I
want my drive letters to be what I want them to be, not what Vista wants
them to be. If I wipe the files from E:, I want it to be the E: I keep
scratch files on, and not find out too late that I just blew away all of my
data files because I forgot that Vista changed the drive letters around.
 
Zootal said:
In this case, G: happens to be an unused partition, and a good place to
stick Vista.

I keep certain types of files on different partitions. My data goes on D:.
Certain archival and all games go on F:. Certain utilities are always
found on C:. E: is used as a backup for critical data files, and is also
where I have XP32 installed. Q: is for temp files that I don't care what
happens to. I used to keep certain types of non-critical files on G:, but
about a year ago I combined F: and G: because I bought a 750GB drive and
now I have room for all of this stuff on one partition.

When I boot to a different OS, I want my drive letters to be the same.
When I boot to XP64, XP32, and Win2000, all of the drive letters are the
same. Everything is where I expect it. Vista changes all of that. It
annoys me. I want my drive letters to be what I want them to be, not what
Vista wants them to be. If I wipe the files from E:, I want it to be the
E: I keep scratch files on, and not find out too late that I just blew
away all of my data files because I forgot that Vista changed the drive
letters around.
Click to expand...


So you are dual booting. Did you mention that before?
Umm why do you have critical backups on an OS partition? That's the height
of folly.
I suggest that you have over-complicated things by not accepting (like
99.99999999% of other people) that the PRIMARY OS goes on C and secondary
OSs go on whichever partition you put them. May I ask WHY you have this
extraordinary setup? What benefits does it bring?
 
So you are dual booting. Did you mention that before?
Umm why do you have critical backups on an OS partition? That's the height
of folly.
I suggest that you have over-complicated things by not accepting (like
99.99999999% of other people) that the PRIMARY OS goes on C and secondary
OSs go on whichever partition you put them. May I ask WHY you have this
extraordinary setup? What benefits does it bring?
Click to expand...

I thought I did mention that I dual boot - I figured it would be rather
obvious since I've mentioned many times I keep different OSs on different
partitions. but for the record I don't dual boot. I quadraboot. At this
time, the box that I'm playing with Vista on has:

C: XP64. All of my programs go here, plus about a GB of utilities that I
keep in a seperate directory (c:\utils) because they don't have any OS
dependencies - I can copy them anywhere and run them at any time without
having to run an installer. This is my primary OS.

D: All of may data files. I backup files on the entire partition to another
drive on this box, and onto drives on two other computers.

E: XP32 and backup for my data files since the E: partition is on a
physical drive seperate from my D: partition. I also backup my D: partition
to two separate drives on two other computers. I boot to XP32 when I need to
do something I can't do in XP64 and a virtual machine won't work.

F: Archive, games, stuff I don't want kept with my data files. I only back
up some of the stuff here, a lot of it is stuff that I keep for convenience,
stuff I haven't bothered to get rid of, ISOs for stuff I've tested, etc.
Most of it would not be missed if the drive crashed.

G: A scratch partition that I currently have Vista64 installed on.

An ext2 partition where I keep Linux and my linux tools. This is my
secondary OS and gets used a lot.

I disagree that having critical backups on an OS partition is folly. What is
important is that they are on seperate physical drives in different boxes. I
once had a promise controller go south and take out all of the hard drives
in a box, backups and all, so I now keep my critical backups on two
additional boxes. Whether or not there is an OS on the partition doesn't put
the data at risk.

Does this over complicate things? From my perspective, this sinplifies
things. If I want to backup my data, I just grab a shot of my entire D:
partition. The entire drive. Do you keep your socks and underwear and
neckties and shoes in the same drawer in your dresser?
 
Zootal said:
I disagree that having critical backups on an OS partition is folly.
Click to expand...

If you boot into the OS on that partition, then yes it IS folly. OS
partitions can corrupt, need re-installing etc etc etc. I agree
whole-heartedly with putting backups on a physically-separate drive, but NOT
one with an OS on it!
 
Gordon said:
If you boot into the OS on that partition, then yes it IS folly. OS
partitions can corrupt, need re-installing etc etc etc. I agree
whole-heartedly with putting backups on a physically-separate drive, but
NOT one with an OS on it!
Click to expand...

In the 25+ years I've been using computers, I've never seen an OS partition
become corrupt because you booted the OS off of it. I've seen the OS itself
become corrupt, particularly back in the Win98 days where all you did was
pass gas and you had to reinstall Win98 yet again...and again...
Reinstalling has no impact on my files because I don't reformat when I
install. If I want the old version of windows out of the way, I simply
rename the windows, documents and settings, programs, etc. directories as
needed and install away. Or just delete them. That way the rest of my files
on the partition are intact.
 
Ahh...that is *exactly* what I needed! I'll try it and post my results
here...
Click to expand...


I couldn't get the install to run without it wanting to do a clean install -
which would wipe my registry changes. If I had more time I'd play with it,
but I don't and my love for Vista isn't enough for me to make the time.

However! I was able to set the rest of my drives back the way I wanted them
by editing the registry. That was too easy - just one stinking registry
setting seemed to be all it takes. So at least I was partially sucessfull.
 
Normally, if you want to contol the drive letters you have to install Vista
from a Windows OS or the bios will assign them.

How did you try to change the drive letters?

Did you try typing "dismgmt.msc" in the run box or above the start button in
the sarch box>right click on the drive letter you want to change>change
drive letter? That should work. Was it ghosted out?

CH
 
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