Multiboot Setup - Drive Letters got jumbled

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Guest

Hello Guys,

Here's the detailed information about the issue I am facing on my multi-boot
PC setup. Its an AMD 64-Bit PC with one SATA 300GB harddisk.

Partitions:VolName
==================
C:WinXP32Bit
D:Win2003
E:Vista32
F:Vista64
G:Data
H:Temp


I installed these Operating Systems in following Order (along with Drive
Letter):
1) Win XP 32 Bit - C:
2) Win2003 32 Bit - D:
3) Vista 32 Bit - E:

From all the above 3 OS, I get all the same drive letters. So far, so good.

Next, I installed Vista x64 on F: drive. When I started the setup from
existing OS, it gave me error saying that it cannot be installed (because its
64bit) from this OS, and I need to boot the PC with the CD/DVD to start the
x64-bit OS. So, I rebooted my PC and started the Vista X64-bit setup.

The setup went fine. But at the end, when I logged into Vista-x64 edition,
I found that the Drive letters (C: to F:) are jumbled as follows:

C:Vista64
D:WinXP32Bit
E:Win2003
F:Vista32
G:Data
H:Temp

Is there any way to fix this problem. From all my OS, I want the Drive
Letters to remain the same. I am OKAY to do a fresh setup, but want to get
the same drive letters from all operating systems.

Also, in the Boot menu, I get "Microsoft Windows Vista" entries twice - 1
for 32-bit and another for 64-bit. How can I change the Label menu text to
show "Vista-32" and "Vista-64" in the boot menu.

Thanks,
Kamlesh
 
Hello Guys,

Here's the detailed information about the issue I am facing on my multi-boot
PC setup. Its an AMD 64-Bit PC with one SATA 300GB harddisk.

Partitions:VolName
==================
C:WinXP32Bit
D:Win2003
E:Vista32
F:Vista64
G:Data
H:Temp

I installed these Operating Systems in following Order (along with Drive
Letter):
1) Win XP 32 Bit - C:
2) Win2003 32 Bit - D:
3) Vista 32 Bit - E:

From all the above 3 OS, I get all the same drive letters. So far, so good.

Next, I installed Vista x64 on F: drive. When I started the setup from
existing OS, it gave me error saying that it cannot be installed (because its
64bit) from this OS, and I need to boot the PC with the CD/DVD to start the
x64-bit OS. So, I rebooted my PC and started the Vista X64-bit setup.

The setup went fine. But at the end, when I logged into Vista-x64 edition,
I found that the Drive letters (C: to F:) are jumbled as follows:

C:Vista64
D:WinXP32Bit
E:Win2003
F:Vista32
G:Data
H:Temp

Is there any way to fix this problem. From all my OS, I want the Drive
Letters to remain the same. I am OKAY to do a fresh setup, but want to get
the same drive letters from all operating systems.

Also, in the Boot menu, I get "Microsoft Windows Vista" entries twice - 1
for 32-bit and another for 64-bit. How can I change the Label menu text to
show "Vista-32" and "Vista-64" in the boot menu.

Thanks,
Kamlesh
Click to expand...

The NTFS used by Vista is not the same as that used by XP. When you
boot from a CD or DVD you can't write the drive letters to the boot
manager so they won't be right. However, for the OSs that are on your
computer you can go into each of them separately and set the drives in
Computer Management. But be VERY careful. In the old Windows you had
to reboot if you say set E to F and Free up E then try to set G to E -
don't do that without rebooting in between - I didn't and lost the
relabeled partitions - one of which was the main OS to boot.

You may find Avanquest's System Commander good as it hides the
partitions when you install new OSs and helps you boot multiple OSs.

There is no boot.ini in Vista - look in Microsoft's support and find
about the .exe files that let you fix boot stuff.
 
Just curious here. Why do you want it set up that way?

I would set it up so any O/S I boot into is partition C: (the others would
be hidden)

Data would be D: and temp would be E: - for each O/S.

Doing as you intend, if one O/S get infected (say with a worm that deletes
all .exe files) every operating system would be hit.

I set up all dual boot computers this way. I have had customers with totally
infected Windows XP partitions while their Windows 2000 partition remained
clean. Put any other O/S in the place of the Win2k system. It's the same
thing - unless you visit the same contaminated web site with both operating
systems.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)
 
Do you have a license for both versions of Vista? You cannot install the
64-bit version of Vista from within another version and it will always
default to C. You can use EasyBCD or VistaBootPro to change the names of
the entries easily, or BCDEdit from a command prompt to change at a command
level
 
John - u got my problem. And I think since I cannot start the Vista x64
setup from any other OS, its defaulting the drive to C:

I could not find a solution for this problem. So, I went ahead with the
following procedure. Rebuild the PC from scratch with following drive
letters. The order of installation is mentioned in parenthesis.

C:Vista64 (4)
D:WinXP32Bit (1)
E:Win2003 (2)
F:Vista32 (3)
G:Data
H:Temp

Richard - thanks for your response. I am just trying out some R&D with
various OS on the same PC. There is no specific business requirement for the
same. :-)
 
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