Drive letters all Fubar on ME/2K system...

[CrazyHelloDeli]

I just set up WinME/2K duel boot and the drive letters are different for each OS. For example, when I boot up WinME my drivers are as follows according to My Computer: WinME on C: drive - Win2K on D: drive - DVD on E: - and CDRW on F:

But if I boot up Win2K the letters change in My Computer: WinME on C: - DVD on D: - CDRW on E: - and 2K on F:

Why is the drives(its not a partitioned single drive, its two separate 30Gig drives) switching like that? I havnt run into any trouble installing things or reading from CD's from each OS, but its just annoying. Any idea why that is, or is that normal?

 

[Relayer]

I'm not totaly sure this will work. I would wait for more opinions on this, but...

It sounds like the winme setup is correct, but the w2k setup is not. I would first change the drive letters of the 2 cd drives in w2k to g and h. Then I would take a look at the boot.ini to see what it looks like. It should look similar to this.

[boot loader]
timeout=4
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\win9x="Microsoft Windows Me"
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

after you get everything the way you want with w2k you can change the drive letters of the cd drives to e and f.

 

[CrazyHelloDeli]

Anyone else?

 

[Relayer]

it may be even easier. you may be able to change the drive letter of the w2k partition to d after you change the cdrom drive letters. make sure you have a rescue disk first. go into disk administrator and you should be able to change f to d. you may have to change your boot.ini though. Can you copy your boot.ini here?

 

[CrazyHelloDeli]

I cant find my boot.ini file. I checked to make sure hidden files are showing but when I do a search is says no boot.ini found. Where is this elusive file?

 

[Relayer]

It's probably in c

 

[Zach]

You can't change the letter of 2K's system drive, it's bad bad bad to mess with that. Paths are ruined. You could try changing the drive letters in WinME, if possible..

 

[Relayer]

Partition Magic could possibly help.

 

[Zach]

Not really, that will just change the partitions. And I don't think their drive magic mover (or whatever that program is called) will take care of Win2K system paths.

It's a live with it, or start over with better planning type situation. The best chance to 'fix' it is to somehow get the Win2K partition to show up as f: in ME, so they match.. CDROM's aren't too hard to change, but partition letters I'm not too hot on. Might want to ask SUO. SUOrangeman or something. Funny name, sharp guy. Good with the Windows jive.

 

[SUOrangeman]

S(yracuse) U(niversity) O(rangeman) is not a PHUNNY name!

The reason why your drives are lettered as such in Win2K is likely because you create the partition for Win2K *during* the Win2K install.

**Take that "How did you know?" look off your face.**

When you ran the install, You already had C: on your hard drive. When you booted the CD or whatever to install Win2K. The CD drives grabbed the letters D: and E:. So, naturally, when you created your Win2K partition, it became F:.

Win9x (well, it's DOS that really does this) automatically finds all of the hard drive partitions first because the CD drivers aren't yet loaded when the lettering takes place. Win2K does the same thing, except that the boot drive (C: ) and the system drive (wherever \WINNT is, F: in your case) cannot be relettered. So, Win2K just fills in the gaps, while not touching those "reserved" letters.

-SUO, Windows jiver