Windows XP on D - want to move to C

[kh4130]

I had a computer that I just reimaged. Originally The XP OS install was on the "C:" drive and there was a utility partition on the "D:" drive.

I Booted from the Windows XP CD, formatted the XP partition (did not touch the recovery utility partition) and reloaded the OS. After I reinstalled the OS and go into my computer the recovery partition is mapped as "C:" and the main/OS partition is mapped as "D:". Is there an EASY way (without buying software) to map the OS "D:" drive back to "C:"?

I tried using the Windows disk management tool but the drive was locked b/c it was the Boot partition.

 

[Kyanzes]

You could use CasperXP. Try a ... trial version.

 

[kh4130]

Anyone know why this could be happening? I did this with an XP x64 reinstall recentlly too (one drive was OS the other was storage). I never had this problem before..

Would deleting the partition, rebooting then formatting/reinstalling help at all?

 

[bwatson283]

don't delete the partion unless really needed, just reformat and install.

 

[Blazer]

to avoid this happening allways disconnect all other HD's, do a repair install or a fresh install to a single hd, never a side by side.

 

[wjal]

Can you show us a printscreen of Disk Management, so we can see what you have for Primary and Extended/Logical partitions?
(Right-click My Computer and choose Manage > Disk Management)

The free Easus Partition Manager is a good tool for manipulating partitions. It works much like Partition Magic.
http://www.partition-tool.com/

 

[kh4130]

The reason I didn't do a reinstall is b/c I wantd all information gone on both computers.

I attached a Screenshot of Disk Management for one of the computers. This was the computer that had Vista x64 on it. I did a format/reinstall with XP x64. The D: drive is the OS install and C: is a Data Store. 1 disk 2 partitions.

 

[wjal]

The original partition must have been a primary partition. The Windows installation disc will not give you the option to create a second primary partition; it automatically creates an extended partition. The problem is that Windows assigns the letter C to the first primary partition.
As it stands, there is no way to remap drive letters because the registry is full of pointers which expect to find Windows on drive D. The only alternative to living with the current configuration is to find a partition manager which can run from bootable media, delete the extended partition where XP currently resides, and create a primary partition in its place, where XP can be reinstalled. Apparently, the free version of the app (Easeus) that I referred to does not extend the bootable media option to the free version. This operation cannot, of course, be done from within a windows environment.
Here are some free partition managers:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/...partitioneditors.shtml
A good rule to follow when working with partition managers is to always work from bootable media, because if something doesn't work and Windows will not boot, you can always get back in and fix it.

This looks interesting, but I am presently on a tablet PC with neither a floppy nor an optical drive to assess it.
http://www.softplatz.com/Soft/...Fdisk-Bootable-CD.html

 

[kh4130]

OK. I was bad on details so I'll give some details to help with confusion. I had this similar problem on 2 different computers.

1: My Home Rig Running XP x64 : 2 partitions - The OS "D" and storage "C". Originally, this computer had Vista x64 on the OS partition but at that time it was correctly mapping to the "C" drive. After the XP x64 install the drive mapping with the OS partition and the storage partition flipped.

Solution: Followed Microsoft's Instructions and made a registry edit This did hose up my OS afterward. I had to do a repair install of XP but OS partition did show up as "C:" during XP setup/repair. I did have some problems with some programs looking for files on "D" instead of "C" afterward. Had to repath some things and reinstall some apps. Some apps did work fine though. I probably would recommend doing a full format/reinstall after this but I plan to format this partition on 1 month. I wanted to play some Left 4 Dead that night.


2: Dell Precision M4400 : Came with Vista on it and 3 partitions (diagnostic, recovery, and OS). Loaded XP Pro on there once and it was fine but had to do a format/reinstall on the OS partition after running into issues with a sysprep setup.

Solution: well.. not really a "Solution" really (big hammer solution). I booted to windows CD and just killed the recovery "C:" and OS "D:" partition and left the Diagnostic partition. I was under the gun to get this out and the "recovery" partition did not look like it ad any useful data on it.

Thanks for the links. Easus was not free for x64 and you are right, I needed a partition manager that ran from a boot disk.

I tried the Super Fdisk Bootable CD on the Dell and for some reason it gave me an error message stating "Partition table on harddisk 1 error" and referred me to Partition Table Dr. However, I ran out of time to figure out problems with the Dell and have it the "big hammer" solution.

 

[wjal]

The big hammer would be my preference if I had someplace else to temporarily hold my data, except that I'd have nuked the diagnostic partition as well, for all that it is worth. Then it would be easy to create the primary partition on the first part of the disk and it wouldn't matter whether the other partition was extended or not; C: would once again be the system drive.