System root drive letter changed

[Stu]

I have a Windows XP system that was badly set up by a tech before me.

Basically it has a 320gb HDD partitioned into two. One partitition C: held the original Vista installation, the second was a small 10gb partition created for XP J:.

The customer was getting errors as not surprisingly XP was running out of disk space, whilst over 250gb was sitting unused on the Vista partition.

Here's what I have done:

1) Remove the HDD and image the XP partition to another disk.

2) Format the original disk back to one big partition.

3) Restore the XP image to this partition, assign it the orginal drive letter J: and make bootable.

4) Fit the HDD back into the computer and boot.

However I am now unable to boot into Windows - I get as far as the blue XP welcome screen, but it just sits there dead. I've seen this before when the system root drive letter gets messed up.

So I booted into ERD Commander, and sure enough the disk has been re-allocated drive letter C:. Problem is, all the data is looking to J: so I'm pretty sure this is the problem. I've tried editing the drive letter back to J: in the registry, but it hasn't worked.

Any ideas?

[AtYourService]

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

is supposed to be the way to do it
i had one bad sysprepped computer i tried it on and i couldnt get it to work
although i didnt have the time to play with it too much because the customer needed the laptop back that night

[frostbyte5014]

This usually happens when someone leaves the memory card readers hooked up and loads the system. The O.S. will put the root drive at the end of the list. The safest way to fix this is a full reinstall.

[MCSTECH]

I second the Memory Card Reader -

If a memory card reader is "installed" or "attached" the HD will always have funky drive letter.

The best and ONLY way I have found to fix this is a clean install without the memory card reader installed, after XP/Vista/7 is installed and running - then plug in and re-install the memory card reader.

I learned the hard way - wasted 2 hours at least (damn updates !!)

[Kenhelms]

For future reference, if you do not want to go thru all that trouble, paragon makes a nice resizing utility for vista.

Takes about 5 mins. That is if that is your only issue.

[drewster]

You can modify the root drive letter in the registry. It's best to do this by booting from a UBCD or Bart PE type disk.

More information here:
http://www.petri.co.il/change_system_drive_letter_in_windows_xp.htm

[rusty.nells]

You can't have a J drive on a single partition disk. By default, the first active primary partition will be C drive. Windows can only boot from the C drive. If the OS files are on the same drive as the boot files, they too are also on drive C.

If you have multiple partitions, you can install the OS on J but the boot files must be on C.

[frostbyte5014]

I'm not saying anyone can't fix the drive letter, but I personally have never found a program or registry fix that would completely fix it without it coming back later and biting me. I find it much easier if I just format and reload. Atleast I can sleep well knowing it is truely fixed.