Is there a way to load and run Win7 from D:

Wow it has taken me a long time to be able to formulate this specific question. I needed to understand the pros and cons of EasyBCD. And Win7 itself. Which is just enough to install, backup and reinstall, and in particular, to move them to another HDD if necessary. A lot of study for relatively a few number of tasks learned...

A part of the difficulty was that I previously ran OS's on C: and then D: in particular, and as a natural progression, I was running Win7 on D: (while XP was on C: ) Apparently, the 'new thinking' is that the OS ALWAYS has to be C: That may be the 'new thinking', but the OPTION to run an OS on the 2nd partition as D: should still be OPTIONAL! But this looks more like politics than anything. The major OS manufacturers in their infinite egos (MS being the leader) couldn't bear the thought of their OS running on D, or E etc, 2nd to another OS! ... (or so it seems)... I have put myself through what amounts to a lot of wasted effort trying to tease out some program or technique that would simply tell Win7 to load and assign itsself D: (and behave!... lol) We know that it IS possible as it will do it after being installed after XP...
And perhaps the answer is in the question... Is that why Win7 did install like that? because it was installed from inside the OS of XP on C:??? Is that part of the answer?

Hmm... if so I wonder if I can recreate an install like that, then copy a saved image afterward, again, that just doesn't sound like an efficient or elegant solution to what should be simple and straightforward... but I no longer underestimate what can go wrong when messing with the wonderful world of boot loaders...

Nonetheless I put this question to the forum... Does anyone have a way of loading a Win7 OS to run on the 2nd partition as D. At this stage it is almost intellectual curiosity. But I would still like to have that option, if I so chose...

The OS drive is always going to be C: Always. This can't be changed. C: is home.

You can have 4 hard drives, one for XP, one for Vista, one for 7, and one 8, but the drive letter for the OS that you're currently booted into will always be C: no matter what. It doesn't matter what the drive letters are for the other hard drives. For example:

While you're in XP, the XP drive will be C:. You can have Vista drive being D:, 7 being E:, and 8 being F: It doesn't have to be exactly like that either but the XP drive will be C:. The other drives won't be OS drives from within XP. They will just be storage drives and they'll be treated as such from within XP, but this is not specific to just XP, this is just the way it works.

While you're in Vista, the Vista drive will be C:. You can have XP being D:, Windows 8 being E:, and Windows 7 being F:. Again, it doesn't have to be exactly like this, but the Vista drive will be C:. The other drives, again, will just be storage drives and will be treated as such from within Vista.

So then when you're in 7, the 7 drive will be C:. You can have Windows 8 being on D:, Vista being on E:, and XP being on F:. It doesn't matter. You might have noticed that I didn't put these in the same order but instead I said 8 first, 7 second, and XP last just to show how unimportant it is which drive gets which letter from within the OS you're booted into because again, they'll just be treated as storage drives from within Windows 7 because in this example, you're sitting in Windows 7 just like how before in the other examples you were in XP and then in Vista.

So, it's the same with Windows 8. The Windows 8 drive will be C: from within Windows 8 just like the others, and the other drives will get whatever drive letters that Windows 8 assigns them just like like XP, Vista and 7 will do. This isn't limited to just XP, Vista, 7 and 8 though: this is just they it works.

Therefore, the C: drive is always going to be the drive letter of the OS that you're currently booted into. It doesn't matter what drive letters are assigned to the other drives: they might not even have those same drive letters from within the other operating systems, nor do they have to because the different installations of your operating systems are not depending on each other or talking to each other or anything like that. They're completely independent from one another.

So let's say that you have two hard drives: a Western Digital hard drive, and a Seagate. Let's say that you install Windows 7 to the Western Digital drive. From within that installation of Windows 7, the Western Digital drive will be C: and the Seagate will be D:. Now let's say that you install Windows XP, or Vista, or 8 or something to the Seagate (or even another copy of Windows 7). When you boot into that installation of Windows on the Seagate, the Seagate will be C: and the Western Digital will be D:. That's just the way it works.

Having Win7 engineered to always be on C when correctly installed from boot is done mainly to avoid issues with some programs that expect to be on C, and a few other issues that sometimes don't even announce themselves but just cause problems.

For that reason it's best to accept this convenience which is hardly some plot but genius applied in our interest.

If you want WIn7 on D for some reason then try installing it from an extant OS. This will normally force it onto the next available letter so I would clear D in advance so it's ready and waiting: Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

However this may have changed as I haven't seen the complaint about installing to another letter from C for quite a while, so perhaps this was changed in SP1.

sigma6 said:

TwoCables said:

The OS drive is always going to be C: Always. This can't be changed. C: is home.

You can have 4 hard drives, one for XP, one for Vista, one for 7, and one 8, but the drive letter for the OS that you're currently booted into will always be C: no matter what. It doesn't matter what the drive letters are for the other hard drives. For example:...

When you boot into that installation of Windows on the Seagate, the Seagate will be C: and the Western Digital will be D:. That's just the way it works.

Thanks for speedy responses. Right, I get the zeitgeist on OS etiquette TwoCables, and I agree that it does make technical sense in a lot of regards as well, sure. As I was trying to point out, I get that... but that doesn't discount the fact I have a Dual boot system, with XP on C and Win7 on D: and it runs flawlessly... and has for years. The OS Gods have not struck my system down with lightning and I suffer no ill consequences as a result. This should tell us something. That it is not only a possibility, but it is a functional alternative. I can vouch for that from realtime experience.

I never messed with Linux, or Ubuntu, etc. and always installed additional MS OSs as they came out... so I never had to even look at "Bootloading" methodology (for lack of a better term), that totally went under my radar. But hey, welcome to the brave new world (lol)

I now have a system set up according to the "principle" of "C drive as center of universe" and it's OK, and I will probably build future systems similar. (the MS mantra, if you can't beat them, join them...)

Anyhow... It's just when I tweak my systems, I put so many countless hours into them, each one takes a character of their own, etc... so I hate dumping them all the time, and starting from scratch, it defeats the purpose... And it doesn't explain why there isn't a super simple software that can be used to set ANY OS to run in ANY configuration WE might want... (outside social conditioning 'imperatives') That still begs the question....

So I do think that some kind of decision was made that makes all OS vendors happy... the above doesn't negate this possibility. And the very absence of such utilities ... by their conspicuous absence, (it would not have been difficult to add the function into Easy BCD, I am still stunned at its absence) still it beggers the question in my mind... i.e. we (or at least I) know it IS possible and functional and practical. So what is the big deal. I can't believe I am so unique as being the only person on the planet that wants to run Win7 as D drive. And even if I was, the fact that it is builit into Win7 to run on D: when it has to follow the "no violate other OS's" principle, clearly shows they are well aware and able to do this when they HAVE TO...

But they don't want YOU to make that DECISION... oh no, and to make sure, YOU WILL FIND NO program, no utility, we will even condition the masses to believe that it just isn't so... It has become an occult practice... (lol) from the original latin meaning of "occult" (which simply means hidden)

When you're in Windows 7, is the C: drive the OS drive for Windows 7? Or is it D:?

gregrocker said:

Having Win7 engineered to always be on C when correctly installed from boot is done mainly to avoid issues with some programs that expect to be on C, and a few other issues that sometimes don't even announce themselves but just cause problems.

For that reason it's best to accept this convenience which is hardly some plot but genius applied in our interest.

If you want WIn7 on D for some reason then try installing it from an extant OS. This will normally force it onto the next available letter so I would clear D in advance so it's ready and waiting: Drive Letter - Add, Change, or Remove in Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums

However this may have changed as I haven't seen the complaint about installing to another letter from C for quite a while, so perhaps this was changed in SP1.

Thanks for this insight Greg... this is confirmation, of my continual ongoing contemplation on this issue. (still haven't got to the bottom yet of what I originally looked at as an "anomaly" (lol) from my "old Win9x to XP" point of view...) That seems to be it, the context of running it from inside another OS... They had to leave us that much... I will look into that... that may be the only way to configure the boot setup and then re-install my old back up image over it afterward... (the inelegant solution...)

The only reason I want it is my last system is set up that way... and I want to maintain the ability to upgrade it to a new HDD if necessary... Otherwise I am sure (now looking at this new "OS understanding") it is not worth the candle. But for now I still have it, and it still runs perfectly and I still like running XP on occasion... for example, I still like to create the occasional HDD as a full logical drive for pure storage purposes, and little things like that... )

And let's face it, we all like to have as much control over our systems as we can get... it's just the nature of the beast...

So when you are sitting in Windows 7, the drive listed as C: is the one that has XP on it and so your C: drive while in Windows 7 is your storage drive?