Installing windows to a hard drive with two partitions

[ss284]

I'm reinstalling windows to a hitachi 160gb drive, with two partitions, a 20, and a 140. The 140 has data on it, and the 20 had my old windows install. However, when I went to install windows, and did a quick format of the 20 gig partition, windows assigned the 140 gig partition c:, and my 20 gig partition d:. Is there any way to change this?


Thanks,

Steve

 

[Smilin]

I believe this is valid for XP:

How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters

 

[ss284]

Ok, so is there any way to change this drive lettering method? It seems that after I deleted my original 20gb boot partition, it labelled my existing 140gig partition as the primary partition, and thus installed the boot files to it.

What I would like to do it reassign my newly formatted 20 gig partition as the primary partition, so I can have my boot and windows files on the one drive. I realize that I can just reformat the whole drive, and then step through the install again and create the 20 gig partition first,then the 140 second, but is there any other way of doing this? I dont have a way to easily back up the 140 gigs of data at the moment.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: ss284
Ok, so is there any way to change this drive lettering method?

mmm, no. That's "how it is done".

It seems that after I deleted my original 20gb boot partition, it labelled my existing 140gig partition as the primary partition, and thus installed the boot files to it.

What I would like to do it reassign my newly formatted 20 gig partition as the primary partition, so I can have my boot and windows files on the one drive. I realize that I can just reformat the whole drive, and then step through the install again and create the 20 gig partition first,then the 140 second, but is there any other way of doing this? I dont have a way to easily back up the 140 gigs of data at the moment.

Thanks,

Steve

If you want to bend the rules you can manually edit your mounted devices key.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188

 

[ss284]

Well, I gave that a shot, and now windows refuses to go past the windows xp starup screen. I can see and move my mouse cursor, and thats about it. I switched my 140gb c: (system partition) with my 20gb dboot partition), which should have switched there drive letters.

I never realized that installing windows xp could be this complicated. Is there any way to alter the MBR to assume that my 20 gig drive is the active primary partition?

-Steve

 

[Smilin]

It's only complicated because you're trying very hard to go against the grain.

If you shift drive letters by accident or "on purpose" it is very likely you'll have registry keys everywhere with the wrong letter. If you do it "on purpose" do it early so you'll have fewer to correct.

if you are currently stuck at a login screen that just loops back to itself then it's possible your userinit value is now pointing to a path with the wrong drive letter. You can edit userinit in the following key, remove the path and leave just "userinit.exe," as the value.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon


Editing your mounteddevices key or other shenanigans to "bend" the rules of how drive letters are assigned is a bad idea. I apologize for helping you dig this far in.

I would *highly recommend* that you just follow that first KB on how drive letters are assigned. Basically, if you want C: to be a particular partition, make that the first one on the first drive and you won't go wrong. It's also perfectly fine to have Windows on D: you know. Most people just aren't used to it.