Drive Letters Changed

[davidst99]

Hi,

I removed a bad hard drive from my desktop. Now my drive C: is N:. Is there any easy way to change it backup with crashing Windows? I'm on Windows 8.1. Thank you.

David

 

[C1]

MS Knowledge Base Article 223188 describes how to change the system drive letter in XP thru using the registry keys. Ive actually had to do that once, but it did work. (There are some caveats given.) Presumably a similar instruction exists for WIN 8. Here is the one for old XP (Note: the stupid emoticons are being put in by the Anandtech website editor. The smilies typically replaced the drive letter references " C: " and " D: " so be careful.):

Change the System/Boot Drive Letter
WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
Log on as an Administrator.
Start Regedt32.exe.
Go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter "\DosDevices\Z:".

This frees up drive letter C.
Find the drive letter you want changed. Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit, and then start Regedt32.
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.

 

[bbhaag]

Here's what worked for me when I cloned my 60gb drive and moved it over to my 240. I use Win8.1 as well.

1.Right click on the Start Button
2.Click on the Disk Management option
3.Right click on the drive(in your case the N: drive) and choose the option Change drive Letter and Paths
4.Click the change option in the pop up window
5.Use the Assign the Following Drive Letter option and choose C: and click OK

Hope this works for you!

 

[corkyg]

Yes - use bbhaag's suggestion. Disk Management is in Administrative Tools. That is where you can manually change all your drive letters. Sometimnes you have to play around a bit in the event the desired letter has been assigned elsewhere. Be patient - it works!

 

[postmortemIA]

Disk mgmt works as long as partition in question is not system or boot partition. If it is, Then disk mgmt will refuse to change drive letter, and approach given by C1 should be taken. And I bet it is system partition, if it wasn't you'd have C:

 

[C1]

Ya, I wrote the response below, but didnt post since I really dont have WIN 8 as well as it (ie, WIN 8) is supposed to be "new" code and one would think) should be a different architecture.

The issue applies to trying to change an OS partition letter to an already installed (on line) system.When attempting to do this, at least with older systems such as XP, be sure to read the complete MS KB article to understand the limitations, caveats and dangers.


--------

The issue with using conventional means to try to change the "system" drive letter is that references to the "system" partition are internally specially protected for obvious reason.

If you recall, when using the disk manager to change a drive letter, you are given a warning that programs which reference the particular drive letter which was being used may no longer work.

In the case of changing the system drive letter after the system has been installed becomes problematic because of issues involving internal coded references and that's why the change needed to be done via the registry. If WIN 8 has changed that via the use of "pointers", that can be problematic but in other ways.

 

[alkemyst]

Yes - use bbhaag's suggestion. Disk Management is in Administrative Tools. That is where you can manually change all your drive letters. Sometimnes you have to play around a bit in the event the desired letter has been assigned elsewhere. Be patient - it works!

QFT...use Disk Management. You may have to play the shell game to reorganize your drives, but the "DRIVE LETTER" doesn't mean much to the underlying OS so it's not a harmful process.

 

[davidst99]

Thanks for all the info. I was able to change the drive in the registry. I ended up having another problem is that I have Windows installed on both drive and the computer didn't know what drive to boot up. I had to reformat one of the drives.