help!! windows xp and 2 hard drives

shawn_selig291

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hello, i got 2 hard drives... one has windows xp and the other has media content on it.. it use to work ... till i did a norton goback system restore... now all my data is still there... but now i see my c: drive is now named to e: ... so now when it boots up it looks for c:(which now is my second hard drive... which isn't bootable..) where c: points to my second drive.. when i try to boot up.. it says theres a file missing.. where its loading wrong drive.. can someone please help change my drive letters back? thanks, happy holidays
 
i have no idea what the problem is , so i did a dell pc restore to restore it back to factory... now the drive letters are back to normal... i'm never putting norotn goback on my computer any more because thats what caused it., thansk for the help!!
 
Changing drive letters in XP

Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage. Under Computer management, click Disk Management. In the right pane, you'll see your drives listed. CD-ROM drives are listed at the bottom of the pane. Right-click the drive or device you want to change, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths. Click Change, click Assign the following drive letter, click the drive letter you want to assign, and then click OK.

BullDog(UK)
 
BullDog ... you are correct that those are the steps to change drive letters. However, its been my experience that XP prevents a user (administrator or other) from changing the drive letter of the system boot partition.
 
Hi CrossCech, I take your point.

Try this ;)

Go in the bios change the boot options to allow you to boot the from other drive (in this case e), then when loaded follow the steps below.


Changing the boot system partition drive letters.

1. Make a full system backup of the computer and system state.
2. Log on as an Administrator.
3. Start Regedt32.exe.
4. Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
5. Click MountedDevices.
6. On the Security menu, click Permissions.
7. Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
8. Quit Regedt32.exe, and then start Regedit.exe.
9. Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
10. Find the drive letter you want to change to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
11. Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

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

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

BullDog(UK)
 
Nearly forgot, if that doesn't work unplug all the drives (inc cd/dvd rom etc) expect the one you believe is now the bootable one. Change the jumper (if needed) on this hard drive to master and make sure it's on IDE cable 1. This should allow you to boot into windows from your newly backup drive.

If not post back and let us know, as their are other option to try ;-)

BullDog(UK)
 
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