Changing hard disk letter...

[SlimNinja]

So I put in a second SATA HD, and installed a fresh copy of Windows on that drive. While it was the slave HD, the drive letter was H.

After install, I removed the old drive and booted from the new install. Everythings fine, except in My Computer the hard disk still shows up as H:. Causes problems when programs assume it to be C:.

How do I fix this?

 

[capnbfg]

Assuming that Windows will let you change the drive letter while it is running, you could do the following. I don't know if it will work or not because I have never tried it on my primary hard drive.

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type compmgmt.msc in the Open box.

2. In the left pane, click Disk Management.

3. Click right mouse button on the drive you want to change and select "Change drive letter and paths." If another drive is currently set to C, you will have to change it to something else first.

If Windows does not allow you to change the primary drive, then you may have to use a bootable disk utility to make the change.

 

[SlimNinja]

Nope...doesn't work on the primary hard drive.....


Any idea of a boot disk utility to do this?

thanks

 

[piratepast40]

If you don't want to live with the drive letter designation, just reload windows. Next time remove the other boot drive first.

 

[SlimNinja]

Reinstall windows you mean?

That seems to be the only option...changing the drive letter with something like Partition Magic and then doing a repair installation of Windows.

I probably won't bother...

 

[piratepast40]

Unfortunately, there are so many complications with changing the OS drive letter designation, it's really in your long term best interest to just reinstall. What you initially did was allright if you wanted a multiboot machine. But since you wanted to remove the old drive, you should have removed it first so there wasn't an existing C drive and an installed OS allready. Once you have the new drive installed as C with your fresh OS, you can reintroduce your old drive to recover files.

You should be able to get by with the quick format on your next install if you haven't put too in too many updates allready.

The forum has some good threads on this issue with the correct terms and technical explanations.