Can I/ should I change drive letter?

[cdrakejr]

I had to reinstall Win XP Home because a failed drive install started causing instability.

The hard drive has 3 partitions (C, F, G) with Windows on C before I did a full reinstall, not repair.
Now Windows is on F and the original F files are on C.
I'm assuming that this is not an ideal setup. Can I / should I change the drive letters so that Windows is on C?

Thanks for any insight!

 

[n0cmonkey]

There is a FAQ on changing drive letters. It may not answer all of your questions, but it is worth looking at.

 

[EeyoreX]

Agreed, the FAQ will help you out.

I'm assuming that this is not an ideal setup

To address that; As far as the operating system is concerned, it doesn't matter in the least. As far as programs are concerned, it shouldn't matter in the least (I can't say for sure about all programs, it's not like I have ever used all programs). You can. You don't need to.

\Dan

 

[cdrakejr]

Thanks for the replys.

The FAQ was good and I'll keep it in mind for possible future need.
But then I found a second "problem" while applying the FAQ directions. Apparently instead of a clean re-install of Windows, I actually installed a second copy of Windows. I had one on C and one on F.
Since I really didn't want to start with a problematic set-up, I am low level reformating the drive with Maxtor PowerMax. Not the most efficient process though, it has been running for 4 hours on an 80GB drive and is about 75% through the drive.

 

[stevewm]

You didn't need to zero-out the drive....

The text based portion of XP's installer has a FDisk like utility built in. (when you get to the part of setup when it asks which partition to install to!) It will allow you to delete and create partitions. All you needed to do was delete all your current partitions and make a partition to install the OS to. Install the OS and then use Disk Management to create any addtional partitions in the unallocated space. Making only a single parition during setup ensures that partition will be assigned C:.