Windows 7 is drive F

[bkelley]

Hello, I have read most of the postings here and cannot find a solution.

I have xp and windows 7 dual booting and all appears to be working well except 1 thing.

xp was alreading installed and I already had a free partition. I installed windows 7 onto the free partition. My problem is that windows 7 is on drive F and xp is on drive c. It does not matter which os is started, they always show as xp on C: and 7 on F:

Everything works but most programs like to install themselves on c drive.
When I have dual booted in the past whichever os was startewas automatically renamed to C:.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to make it so that when I start XP it is on drive C (as it is now) and then when I start Windows 7 have it be on drive C


Thank you

 

[Jonathan_King]

Hello, Welcome!

Go into Device Manager and right-click on the partition whose drive letter you want to change. Then select Change drive letter and paths.

Hope this helps,
~Jonathan

 

[computersplus]

Drive Letters

Drive letters don't normally change like that they are set and would only change if a device was removed.

From the sounds of it you had XP installed as C: along with a couple of optical drives which would be D: and E: and then you had another partition put into use afterward which would have been assigned as F:

This should work fine if you are having trouble installing programs look for the option when the installer starts to change the install directory to the drive you want the program installed to.

 

[SIW2]

You will be fine leaving the letters as they are.

I chose to have my first o/s partition as C , my second o/s partition as D , my third o/s partition as E, etc.

They stay consistent whichever I boot into.

There should be no problem with installers.

Have fun with 7.

 

[bkelley]

I would like that c: is always the drive I boot from. Some programs always install somewhere on the c-drive. Some of them do not give you the option to change.
So when I am in Win 7, (F drive) it will start putting stuff on my XP drive (c drive)

Would really like to have the following when I'm in Win 7:
c: Win 7 drive
F: XP drive

When I am in XP:
c: XP-drive
F: Win 7

When I had Linux on my system years ago it worked this way.
Thanks

 

[gregrocker]

Starting around RTM, Win7 started making drive letters relative on some installs, so that it always sees itself as C: when you're in 7, while Vista also sees itself as C: when ur in Vista.

I believe there is a way to force it to do that but would involve reinstalling, possibly both OS's.

Someone may know for sure or come across it.

I believe your problems with drive lettering will be minimal. SIW2 says so, and he is one of the smarter guys around here.

 

[computersplus]

Drive Letters

The drive letters will not change like that.

Once you assign a letter to a drive it does not change in that manner, it does not matter what partition you have booted to they are still the same C will always be C and F will always be F.

 

[FuturDreamz]

It wuld probably be tricky to change the driveletter of the booted partition without reinstalling - I once used gparted to extend my D: partition which was reset to C: and cause that partition to be unusable.

 

[SIW2]

I don't recommend it.

Here you go -

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

I would like that c: is always the drive I boot from. Some programs always install somewhere on the c-drive. Some of them do not give you the option to change.
So when I am in Win 7, (F drive) it will start putting stuff on my XP drive (c drive)

Would really like to have the following when I'm in Win 7:
c: Win 7 drive
F: XP drive

When I am in XP:
c: XP-drive
F: Win 7

When I had Linux on my system years ago it worked this way.
Thanks