OS Drive letter not C: as I want it to be.

[ViperMWC]

Good day all,
My situation is, previous OS was Vista home edition, after evaluatiing the Win7 RC, I bought myself a copy of Win 7, installed it on a new hard drive and have been happily using my system as a dual boot one, both Win 7 and Vista working fine. Need has required me to remove the hard drive containing my Vista OS and I'm now using a single Win 7 system. Everything OK on that btw, just that now I have the OS on Drive M:, not C: where I would like it to be.
Having had a read through on the Boot Drive letter allocation posts, I've established that it is impossible to change the system boot drive letter.
I would prefer not to have to do a full re-install of Win 7 and all my programs, but if that is the only way so be it. I believe I'm right in saying that even doing a full backup and then re-installing Win 7 wouldn't be of use as the backup would be looking to restore to the M: drive.
My question then would be, how do I ensure than a new installation of Win 7 WILL select drive C; to install to ?
This might be self evident when a re-install is started, but I'd like to be one step ahead here and know what's coming.
Any guidence would be most gratefully received here.
All the best,
Mick C.

 

[Dinesh]

Hi there, when you do a clean install, on a blank HDD, win7 would automatically select it as C drive.
Reason:
Drive A: Floppy Drive
Drive B: 2d Floppy Drive
Drive C: Hard Drive (OS partition)
Drive D: CD/DVD drive.

So be rest assured and dont forget to back up before doing a clean install.

 

[fireberd]

Mine wound up on "E". I installed a new 1TB hard drive to install Win 7 on, I used an "upgrade" and when it installed, it did a "clean install" but it came up as "E" drive. I went through a long discussion on this forum about it and it appears the only true way to get it back to "C" would be to do a complete new installation. I have since removed the old Vista 64 bit that was on the "C" drive (it's now just used for Acronis True Image backups). I've got used to the OS being on "E" drive and probably will stay with that until and if I ever have to do a reinstall and then I'll install Win 7 on the "C" drive. Everything will work the same as if it was the "C" drive, it doesn't really matter what the Drive Letter is to the OS. Other programs also install correctly, in my case, on the "E" Drive.

 

[Dinesh]

The main reason of the drive letter change during OS installation is when you have external peripherals like printers, ext. HDD, USB modems, etc. plugged in. So always unplug these things before doing a clean install.

 

[fireberd]

I did an update from within Vista 64 bit and that is why mine wound up on "E" drive. It had nothing to do with peripherals attached as none were attached when the Win 7 install was done. It was my own fault, by installing from within Vista 64 instead of just booting with the Win 7 Upgrade disc.

 

[gregrocker]

When installed correctly from the booted installer, Win7 always sees itself as C.

You must have run the installer from another OS which locked out that letter.

Boot it.

 

[ViperMWC]

Many thanks for the speedy replies,
Thanks for all the imformation and mini education on getting organised when intalling an OS. Have decided to go for a clean intall, as I will be purchasing another hard drive anyway for storage, I might as well re-do everything and get the OS drive letter sorted out at the same time. Appreciate the point about it not mattering what the allocated OS drive letter is, everything works Ok, it just bugged me that was all.
All the best,
Mick C.

 

[arielyn]

installing windows 7 not on drive C

Hi, i have this problem that while downgrading from windows 7 ultimate to windows xp sp2 i encountered this problem. I used a usb bootable since my dvd drive is broken.

Here's what i did:
1. Reformatted drive C so as to delete windows 7 ultimate.
2. Re partitioned drive C into 2 where i have a previous drive which is drive D as my file drive.
3. Installed windows xp on 1st partitioned as a part of drive C.

as the installation goes my laptop has turned off so i have to repeat the same thing and so i tried it on the 2nd partitioned part of drive c. but i noticed that my drive D turned out to be the drive C now.

After this situation i found it wrong to downgrade my OS so i'm planning to install windows 7 professional. But what should i do now when i have two repartitioned drive with windowx xp (not fully installed since it got error because of downgrade) turns out to be that my laptop doesn't have a running OS.

My questions:
1. What will happen to my drive D that became drive C? will i able to recover my files?
What will happen if i deleted both xp on repartitioned drives? will it became drive C again?
2. Though my drive is not the C anymore, should i continue reformatting? will it not affect my files? (as drive D became the drive c)
3. Will my bootable usb with windows 7 prof. proceed on installing on the other drive? ( i want to prevent it from installing on my drive D that became drive C because i have to recover my files)
4. Is there any other way that i could return the drive d as drive d again as it become the drive c?
5. Is there any configuration for bootable usb that will help me solve the problem?

please help me thanks.

 

[gregrocker]

Best to back up your files and start over. You can boot in with your DVD to copy out your files to external USB, or at least make sure they are intact: Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

If you still want a Dual Boot then follow Method One in this tutorial: Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP, booting XP CD to install first to the first partition, then booting the Win7 DVD to install next to the second partition.

If you cannot copy out your data but see it using installer or Paragon rescue disk then boot the XP CD to install to the other partition so you can access your data and copy it into the new XP installation. Then when the second partition is emptied, boot the Win7 DVD to install to the second partition.

As long as you boot each installer, and install XP first, then each will see itself as C when booted and see the other partition as D. This is how Win7 is designed when correctly booted to install. But XP is too old to do this on its own so it must be installed first so that it will always claim C.

 

[arielyn]

Hi thanks for the reply, i decided to format the other disk into win 7 and other one is left as old windows since i dont have a bootable xp anymore.

Because i wanted to retrieve my files but what happened was, after installing windows 7 the drive became C (win 7 installed) and windows xp old (drive d) so my former D drive became inactive.

So how will i able to fuse my drive C and D now? to make it as 1 drive C? i was able to retrieve my former drive D using computer management in win 7.

THanks

 

[gregrocker]

You were able to retrieve your files into Win7?

Please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk management drive map and listings using Snipping Tool in Start menu to take a rectangular snip, save and attach with paper clip in reply box. We will give you the steps to delete D in Disk Mgmt to Extend C into that space.

As long as the System Active boot flags are all on C then you can go ahead if both partitions are Primary:
Partition or Volume - Delete D
Partition or Volume - Extend C

If you have programs that will only run in XP, try installing them to Win7 in XP SP2 Compatibility Mode first. Then if necessary try installling Virtual Player, Virtual Box, or VMWare freeware to install XP into to see how you like running XP virtually in a player for those programs. These are much better options than trying to Dual Boot XP at this late date. However if you must we can help you with that as well.