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| Thread ID: 46538 | 2004-06-27 09:31:00 | Where are drive letters assigned to partitions in Win2k | hillisp (4195) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 247962 | 2004-06-27 09:31:00 | Where are drive letters assigned to partitions? I assume this is in the operating system so on a dual boot system the same partition could have a different drive letter, but I can’t seem to make it happen. What I have is a machine with WinXP installed that I want to dual boot with Win2k. I set up the drive with two partition (XP on partition 1 and was going to install Win2k on Partition 2) – no problems there. In XP partition 1 is C Drive and Partition 2 is D Drive. In Win 2k I would like to make partition 1 as D Drive and Partition 2 as C Drive, so that the OS you are using is always labelled as C drive. Problem is when I boot from the Win2k CD it always labels partition 2 as D Drive and wants to install it there (and if I install it there it does work fine). I have tried making XP the second physical partition on the drive (by using PartitionMagic to created a new partition before the XP partition) which works fine in XP (ie partition 1 is now D Drive and Partition 2 is C Drive) , but when I boot from the Win2k CD it is still labelling the XP partition as C and the new one as D even though the new one comes first. Can anyone tell me where it is getting these drive letter assignments from? p.s. I am trying to avoid reinstalling XP as this is all set up and has a lot of data already on it . I know MS recommend the earlier operating system be installed first and some tweaking is needed to do it the other way around but I have overcome that. I just want Win2k to call the partition it is installed on C drive not D drive if possible. Thank, Peter |
hillisp (4195) | ||
| 247963 | 2004-06-27 09:40:00 | Right click onto MyComputer and choose manage->disk management and right click on the disk in question and reallocate the drive letter. Changing the drive letter on the parition where WIndows is installed would not be advisable due to registry issues I would suspect! |
JohnD (509) | ||
| 247964 | 2004-06-27 09:48:00 | I'm trying to change the drive letter BEFORE I install Win2k so there is no MyComputer or GUI ( exacly to avoid the problem you mentioned of not changing the drive letter on the parition where WIndows in installed later). What I want to know is - When I boot from a windows 2000 installation CD how is it determining what letter to assign to want partition, and how do I change this before continuing with the install. |
hillisp (4195) | ||
| 247965 | 2004-06-27 09:55:00 | An idea I suspect would work - hide the partition (with say Partition magic) with the first OS on it then boot from the install CD and install the second OS. YOu may have to edit the boot.ini file to get both boot options when you have finished. YOu may prefer to wait for confirmation from somebody else. |
JohnD (509) | ||
| 247966 | 2004-06-27 10:00:00 | If Windows relies on the drive letter configurations as you have given, one way around this might be to boot from something like XOSL (www.ranish.com). | JohnD (509) | ||
| 247967 | 2004-06-27 20:07:00 | Might of figured it out - appears C Drive is assigned to the active patition, so by booting from a floppy with fdisk on I set the active partition to the one I wanted Win2k on and then rebooted from the win2k install disk and the right dive was labelled as C. Will let you know if I can get the dual boot working this way. Peter |
hillisp (4195) | ||
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