Baderup Posted September 28, 2009 Report Share Posted September 28, 2009 I was working on a Dell Laptop that has Dell Media Direct. I reformatted the whole HDD and Dell says that Media Direct needs about 2gigs of its own partition. So I first put in the 2gigs and then made the XP PRO partition. Well little did I realize was Media Direct was now C: and XP was D: So I went ahead and started setting the computer up but I realized through downloading and installing updates, drivers, software... somethings wanted to be placed within the C: drive, not a big deal I could redirect where things should be saved/installed. However once I give this laptop back to the owner I doubt they'll know what to do. I read about changing the drive letter in regedit, and I thought well I haven't put that much time into setting this computer up so if somethings does happen I can always start again... something did happened. I changed the drive letters in regedit restarted the computer and XP did not boot up at all.So what did I do wrong? Was there any other way of successfully changing the drive letters, or would you really have to reformat just to do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted September 29, 2009 Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 I right click on My Computer and select manage, then click on Disk management. You can change drive letters in there for any of the drives. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted September 29, 2009 Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 You cannot just change the drive letter from D: to C: if Windows is installed on the drive; there are thousands of references - not only in the registry - that directly use the installed drive letter.If you need Windows on C: then you must install it there. Make sure that it is a primary partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted September 29, 2009 Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 You cannot just change the drive letter from D: to C: if Windows is installed on the drive; there are thousands of references - not only in the registry - that directly use the installed drive letter.If you need Windows on C: then you must install it there. Make sure that it is a primary partition.I stand corrected regarding C drive, but have given my other drives letters of my own choice. My second internal hard drive is D. One plug in hard drive is M, the other is K. Two memory sticks are S and T. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted September 29, 2009 Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 What Pat says is right, you cannot change the drive letter of the OS while it is running.The only way to change it is a fresh install. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baderup Posted September 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 What Pat says is right, you cannot change the drive letter of the OS while it is running.The only way to change it is a fresh install.ok, figured. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rong Posted September 29, 2009 Report Share Posted September 29, 2009 Partition Magic will do it and change all the associations♦, not sure about the main drive though, not sure if I have done that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted September 30, 2009 Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Anyway, there is no problem having the OS installed on the D: drive - I have Windows 2000 installed on E: on my old laptop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baderup Posted September 30, 2009 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2009 Anyway, there is no problem having the OS installed on the D: drive - I have Windows 2000 installed on E: on my old laptop.Yeah, but when I was installing some things, it sometimes prompted to install in the C: drive so I would have to point the installation to the right drive, which is fine, but the person whose laptop it is probably wouldn't do that. You know how some people install things....next,next,next,next,next,finish! they dont even look to see what they are doing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjm2164 Posted October 11, 2009 Report Share Posted October 11, 2009 I was working on a Dell Laptop that has Dell Media Direct. I reformatted the whole HDD and Dell says that Media Direct needs about 2gigs of its own partition. So I first put in the 2gigs and then made the XP PRO partition. Well little did I realize was Media Direct was now C: and XP was D: So I went ahead and started setting the computer up but I realized through downloading and installing updates, drivers, software... somethings wanted to be placed within the C: drive, not a big deal I could redirect where things should be saved/installed. However once I give this laptop back to the owner I doubt they'll know what to do. I read about changing the drive letter in regedit, and I thought well I haven't put that much time into setting this computer up so if somethings does happen I can always start again... something did happened. I changed the drive letters in regedit restarted the computer and XP did not boot up at all.So what did I do wrong? Was there any other way of successfully changing the drive letters, or would you really have to reformat just to do that?Just rename the drives to Windows drive and second drive Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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