Windows 7: Can't change hard drive letter to needed letter

I lost my Event Viewer, and had to do a repair installation to fix it. Unfortunately, during the repair install, Windows decided to rename my second HD as the D: drive... it was K: before that. Now I cannot access any of my docs, pictures, music, or videos through the normal means... they don't show up in libraries or explorer, and apps like Restorator and Sure Thing (CD labeler) cannot find them. I think that means the paths are broken..?

It won't allow me to rename the HD back into K: (it's not listed as available). I can access the data by clicking Computer > D, and I can see the data is there, but its unusable as of now. Any ideas?

Hello Stevie,

To be safe, you should create a restore point before doing this in case you make a mistake and need to use it to do a system restore.

Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7

1. If the K letter is not being used by another internal drive, then you can open regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

2. In the left pane, Take ownership (step 2 in Option Two of METHOD TWO) of the registry key MountedDevices and "Allow" yourself "Full Control" of it as well.

3. In the right pane of MountedDevices, right click on \DosDevices\K: and click on Delete and OK.

4. Restart the computer to apply. You should now be able to change the second hard drive letter to K.



Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks!

Oh nice... just to make things more fun, the "take ownership" context menu shortcut doesn't work in regedit... lovely.

Nope, you will need to do it manually using step 2 in Option Two of METHOD TWO in the Take Ownership tutorial link above.

Go to control panel - administrative tools - computer management -disc management.

Assign a different drive letter to the device using K:. Then change the current D: to K: and all should be well.

Luck-

YAY! It worked! I have my K: drive back, and I can access all of my stuff!

I couldn't figure out the correct file path for the command prompt method to take ownership, so I just granted myself full privileges and skipped the "take ownership" step... and it worked anyway! Although I might have inadvertently already taken ownership earlier... as I was trying to fix this problem before I turned to the forum... so that step might not have been skipped.

Thanks for the help!

Unfortunately, I couldn't do it that way. There was no device with the letter K: listed in disc management, yet that letter was also not listed as available under "change letter of drive". I guess that during the repair install, it recognized the second HD as K:, locked out the use of that letter, and then renamed the drive to D:. Brink's registry fix forced the letter K: to be freed up so I could rename my data disc back to K:.

Very cool, whatever works to get it done. Regards- Ken

Stevie,

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.