How to change drive letter in XP when dual boot with 7?

sup3rsprt said:

SIW2's method was to get rid of the drive letter on the system boot partition. But Windows XP itself will still be tied to the D: drive.

My dual boot XP's have often been C: when I'm in XP and D: when I'm in 7.

The issue seems to be why the 100mb partition is lettered C: in XP. The solution to delete it still seems the best, unless there are other ideas.

sup3rsprt said:

justi said:

I tried to fix it but now I can't logon to xp.

What did you do that broke XP?

You might want to attach a screenshot of Disk Management, so we can have a look

read first page. the only way he can recover from that "forced relettering of a system drive" disaster is to reimage, but he wants to solve the problem which will still exists: how to get the C: letter off of the 100mb system partition and onto his XP.

I believe the solution is to delete the 100 mb partition as shown above to free up the C: letter and then see how XP letters the drives. You will have C: available for a reinstall of XP in the worst case. Then use EasyBCD from XP desktop to add Win7 to bootloader because Win7 startup repair might otherwise re-write the 100mb partition.

A little more help here?

sup3rsprt said:

justi said:

I tried to fix it but now I can't logon to xp.

What did you do that broke XP?

You might want to attach a screenshot of Disk Management, so we can have a look

I can't use xp so I can't post a screenshot.
I followed this Microsoft KB that broke xp.
(aka the method pbcopter said #4)

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

gregrocker said:

My dual boot XP's have often been C: when I'm in XP and D: when I'm in 7.

Didn't he say XP shows up in D: even in XP. If so, it's a different issue.

gregrocker said:

sup3rsprt said:

SIW2's method was to get rid of the drive letter on the system boot partition. But Windows XP itself will still be tied to the D: drive.

My dual boot XP's have often been C: when I'm in XP and D: when I'm in 7.

The issue seems to be why the 100mb partition is lettered C: in XP. The solution to delete it still seems the best, unless there are other ideas.

You mean the OS you log onto is always c:?
I also think so but I doubt if I delete it then recover xp,7 will become c: in xp because I mark it as active.

justi said:

I can't use xp so I can't post a screenshot.

Make a screenshot in Windows 7.

justi said:

I followed this Microsoft KB that broke xp.
(aka the method pbcopter said #4)

Ah, yeah. That's typical. You tried to change the XP partition letter in the registry, which is not reliable.

gregrocker said:

how to get the C: letter off of the 100mb system partition and onto his XP.

Yes,exactly.I wanna make 7 is c: when I'm in 7 and xp is c: when in xp.

justi said:

sup3rsprt said:

justi said:

I tried to fix it but now I can't logon to xp.

What did you do that broke XP?

You might want to attach a screenshot of Disk Management, so we can have a look

I can't use xp so I can't post a screenshot.
I followed this Microsoft KB that broke xp.
(aka the method pbcopter said #4)

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

That's the same one I followed that broke my Vista or Win7 awhile back. Didn't heed the warning at the beginning not to do it unless the drive letters have changed from one letter to another recently.

If you installed WIn7 second to XP, which I assume you did since it added the boot partition, then XP has proven its ability to change drive letters by lettering that 100mb partition C: after it was installed. Wasn't XP lettered C: before you installed Win7?

This means that XP can change its letter and may do so again if/when you delete that 100mb partition and reinstall the boot loader in XP as SIW2 suggests:

SIW2 said:

You could boot the 7 dvd to system recovery options command promt.

Then use diskpart to remove the 100mb partition and mark the 7 partition Active.

Then run startup repair 3 times.

Boot into 7, and add XP entries to the new bcd store using bcdedit.

Any backup image you already have won't include those changes - so make another when done.

It's worth a try if you are up for it, see where the letters end up and go from there. . You'll need to reimage first, but that's easy with Win7 backup imaging. After we see where the letters land, it may need an XP reinstall but we need to see first. You can always re-image if you give up. But there is probably a fix in here somewhere since XP has apparently already shown that it can change letters after install, right?

sup3rsprt said:

gregrocker said:

My dual boot XP's have often been C: when I'm in XP and D: when I'm in 7.

Didn't he say XP shows up in D: even in XP. If so, it's a different issue.

Yes,it has 3 partitions showed in 7 but 4 in xp so the drive letters are all different.