multiboot drive letter surprise


  1. gregglee
    Posts : 53
    Windows 7 Home Premium X64 SP1
       New #1

    multiboot drive letter surprise


    I created a second windows 7 installation on a different drive. I have done multiboot before but always by booting from the installation disk. This time I ran the install disk from the existing w7 installation, selected custom then the partition on another disk where I wanted the second installation. Ran with no hitches.

    The surprise is that when I boot into the second install the drive letter of the system drive is not C: but instead is the same as it was as in the the original installation, which happens to be X, which I chose as a placeholder.

    Is this normal behavior? I don't guess it matters except for the order in which drives appear in windows explorer. I doubt I should try to change the drive letter now.

    In the past the system drive letter has always been C: for whichever system was booted. (I then changed whatever letter was assigned to the inactive system partition to x.y.or z to keep at the bottom of the list, away from the other drives..
    Last edited by gregglee; 18 Dec 2010 at 12:55. Reason: spelling
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  3. gregrocker
    Posts : 50,642
       New #2

    Win7 always sees itself as C when installed from boot, however if installed from another OS which already holds C it will take another letter.

    Always boot the installer for this reason, and so you have Custom>Drive Options to delete and/or repartition if you want and format target partition.
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  4. gregglee
    Posts : 53
    Windows 7 Home Premium X64 SP1
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Thanks.
    While I'm on the subject, does "always boot" also apply to repair or recovery procedures?
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  6. gregrocker
    Posts : 50,642
       New #4

    If you have the 100mb Sys Reserved partition (look in Disk Mgmt) then you also have the Repair console on F8 Advanced Boot Tools menu, but if not it is best to run Repairs and Recovery from the Repair CD or DVD Repair console.
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