Reassigning letters to a boot drive

[thecoolnessrune]

I have a Gateway GT4010 that has chosen not to play well and I've been reimaging the machine. The problem is it has a whole bunch of other card reader drives in it that insist on being considered drives. So it want to call the main drive H. Which makes it a chore to install programs since its not default. I know I can reassign drive letters to any non boot drive I want. But it's the boot drive I want to change. Any ideas? I haven't used FDISK in a while, could I wipe the drive and then create a FAT 32 partition and give it the C label before doing a conversion to NTFS during setup? Can you assign labels in something like FDISK?

 

[bruceb]

Look here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

and also here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307844

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: bruceb
Look here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

and also here: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307844

Neither apply. This was assumedly done at install time, not due to a mirror issue. Changing drive letters in that scenario is almost impossible. A repair install is one possibility in this instance, disabling the USB devices prior to installation and ensuring \WINDOWS goes onto C:.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

So could I possible remove Windows, unplug the card reader, install Windows, and then plug back in the reader? Hmm.. that could probably work, I think I'll give that a shot..

 

[Atheus]

Almost impossible - I've been through this. Ended up reinstalling with only one hard drive and one optical drive hooked up.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I got it going by removing everything except the HD and OD. I installed XP MCE and then shut down and connected the card reader. It assigned drive letters properly.

Go me!