Win 7 installed on new drive as "E" Can I change?

[fireberd]

I had Vista 64 bit on one hard drive (C). When I upgraded to Win 7 I had to do a new install as I went from Vista 64 bit Home Premium to Win 7 64 bit Professional. That wasn't a problem as I had a new 1TB drive formatted and ready to use for Win 7. However, when I installed Win 7 it installed on the new hard drive but set it up as "E". Now, I have a dual boot with Win 7 and Vista but Win 7 is drive "E". If I remove the dual boot and physically disconnect the Vista drive, can I rename the Win 7 to "C" and will all the installed software recognize "C" instead of the current "E"? I don't need the old Vista 64 bit anymore.

Obviously there is no difference on what the drive letter is, just wanted to get back to the conventional "C" drive without having to do a complete new install, now that I have everything setup and working in Win 7.

 

[torrentg]

You can but it has potential problems that may arise.

There is a key you can edit in the registry.

This is for XP but I've already used it fine for Windows 7 too.

Change System Drive Letter in Windows XP

In their example, substitute D: with your E:, instead.

 

[gregrocker]

Unfortunately there is no way to rename the drive letter of an active system drive. MS provides a tutorial for doing so if the letter accidentally changes, but warns clearly that it will make the system unbootable otherwise. I have tried it twice and it is unrecoverably boinked.

When you unplug your Vista drive and recover the MBR to Win7, there is a chance Win7 will assume the C: drive as it has the ability to do that itself. Normally it would already view itself as C: when you are in Win7 and E: when in Vista (and vice versa) if this were the case, though.

There is no reason to not have Win7 as E: drive, however there are some simple steps for recovering the MBR to Win7 after you unplug the Vista drive. You must mark the Win7 partition active and then boot into the Win7 DVD Repair console and run Startup Repair 3 times.

This is assuming that you installed Win7 second in a dual boot with Vista and it configured the boot with the MBR remaining on Vista. If you want to know for sure, see which drive is marked Active and System in Disk Management. If you post a screenshot of the full map using the Snipping Tool on Start menu, attached here using the paper clip in reply box, we can advise you better.

 

[torrentg]

Unfortunately there is no way to rename the drive letter of an active system drive. MS provides a tutorial for doing so if the letter accidentally changes, but warns clearly that it will make the system unbootable otherwise. I have tried it twice and it is unrecoverably boinked.

Did you completely miss my post saying it works for me and I've done it?

 

[gregrocker]

Unfortunately there is no way to rename the drive letter of an active system drive. MS provides a tutorial for doing so if the letter accidentally changes, but warns clearly that it will make the system unbootable otherwise. I have tried it twice and it is unrecoverably boinked.

Did you completely miss my post saying it works for me and I've done it?

Yes, sorry.

Did you miss my statement that I tried it twice and it killed my OS?

Would like to hear from others since we could have both had different luck.

 

[torrentg]

lol I hear ya.

It's actually quite simple to do if that page I posted is followed precisely.

 

[Ztruker]

How does that take care of all the other entries in the registry that point to the original drive letter? There are literally thousands of them.

Also, what about shortcuts that point to the original drive letter? They will now point to nowhere.

I don't see how this can work, but I'm willing to learn.

 

[torrentg]

It simply does what is needed by following the link I posted.

Upon a reboot, the registry is altered on the fly by the OS and things go well from there on.

Now if you have any pointers in software, you'll manually have to change them. An example is like where to save downloads in FF. You'd have to change that by hand if you had it set to the system drive previously. Minor things like that. Or uTorrent save locations etc...

 

[iseeuu]

When I first installed the 7 Beta, I setup the 32 bit and the 64 bit in a dual boot on a single drive. I changed the drives letters so that when I was booted to 32 bit, that partition was C: and the 64 bit was H:. Then when I was booted to the 64 bit, that partition was C: and the 32 bit was H:. No Problems.

Robert

.

 

[gregrocker]

This is the tutorial I followed last time I killed my OS doing this:

How to restore the system/boot drive letter in Windows

Afterward I posted in beta forum asking what I did wrong (twice), and got flamed as the biggest idiot on earth since MS says clearly not to do it except for temporary letter change.

So please excuse if I am still a little scorched from this experience.

 

[torrentg]

Yeah, I'm aware of that page.

They use the word "may" and not "will" because it is not guaranteed to mess up a system. They are protecting themselves and don't want added problems from users making mistakes etc...

Notice they do not explicitly state that it is impossible or will not work.

 

[fireberd]

After reading all the posts, I've decided to just leave it as it is. Sort of the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it". It really doesn't matter what the drive letter is other than the "C convention". If I ever (should I say when) have to reinstall then I'll straighten it out and install it as "C".

Thanks/Jack

 

[MacGyvr]

It simply does what is needed by following the link I posted.

Upon a reboot, the registry is altered on the fly by the OS and things go well from there on.

Now if you have any pointers in software, you'll manually have to change them. An example is like where to save downloads in FF. You'd have to change that by hand if you had it set to the system drive previously. Minor things like that. Or uTorrent save locations etc...

Actually, the link you posted states that the procedure is only for systems where the drive letter was changed AFTER the OS was installed, NOT if the drive letter is where the system was actually installed originally.

I've tried this myself a few times and it has never worked. It just isn't advisable.

 

[torrentg]

I guess I must have been lucky then when it worked for me.

 

[gregrocker]

TG, trust me nobody doubts it worked for you. We have all learned from your advice in the past and know your word is good. We just have different experiences with this, and some of us got burned when we tried it ourselves.

 

[torrentg]

Ya, I hear ya. It probably is better for users to not mess around with it unless he/she knows how to offline edit the reg in case of failure. lol My boot drive right now is D: (Volume with Windows on it.)

Later on, I might try to make it C: for the heck of it. Last time I did it was months ago. It is possible I did other things too along with what I posted to make it work but I'm almost sure I didn't.

 

[DeaconFrost]

I wouldn't bother trying it, as no guide or method has ever worked for me either. The solution, either leave it the way it is, or do a clean install, paying attention to the drive letter assigned this time around.

 

[solar]

Fireberd:

doh? It should be very easy.

If you installed WIndows 7 after a Vista install, WIndows 7 'should have taken over the bootloader and when YOu log into Win7 it shoulf of set E to C and Vista (C) would of been set to somethign else.. D most likely.

That is a bit strange.. if you say you dont need vista anymore... Id delte it and reinstall Win 7 on C.

If none of that is wished for and you wish to keep it as is atm and just force E to be C give this a try:

(in case of errors, given someone said he 'borked' his installation lol) just keep a winpe disk on usb.

Now. cmd (admin level), run diskpart.exe

type:
list volume
lets say E is volume 3 and C is volume 1
then type :
select volume 1
(when volume 1 is now selected)
you type:
remove letter=C
(if succesful)

select volume 3
remove letter=E
assign letter=C
select volume 1
assign letter=E (for example.. u can also change these parameters easier in computer-> manage -> disk managment)

Now... before restarting:

still in admin cmd : run
bcdedit > bcd.txt
notepad bcd.txt

In the notepad file you will see entries.... the vista one will have entries containing C and Win 7 E
Please make sure you do this in windows 7 (in fact erm... wait... since its a bit strange iwn 7 doesnt take over C, in disk management verify which is boot partition). Hmmm, now I realize Vista C will still probably be the active and/or boot partition.

ok wait... fireberd... in fact STRIKE all ive said for now... BUT IF YOU STILL ARE INTERESTED...

then report back with this and I can give you more advice:

disk management -> which partition is active and which partition is boot (may or may not be the same)(do this BOTH in vista AND in win 7)

do in cmd : bcdedit /enum all > bcdwin7.txt (when u r in windows 7)
and bcdedit /enum all > bcdVista.txt (when u r in Vista)

attach those two files or do a screenshot of them n attack for me.

also, you could do diskpart , list volumes, from Win 7 for me and thats it

.

Basically, to change yoru partitions, needs only two things even if it looks a bit strenous if you do not do basic commands yourself (aka a 'normal common end user').

1. manipulate volume letters in windows 7 (assuming you want newer OS to be dominant),
2. edit bcdedit accordingly, regardless of which partition is still running it.

[3]. if above would not be sufficient, a more advanced bcd rebuild is possible by moving it to win 7 partition, but then I would highly recommend just installing Win 7 on C.

FINAL NOTE. if you have a recovery console , winre /winpe disk (you do automatically in win7 implicitly), then you can also do from windows 7, bootsect /nt60 all /force


toodles

 

[Saltgrass]

The fact there are so many responses means there is some confusion about how this type of stuff works. Since I have been playing with this the last few days, hopefully I have some insight.

To test what I say, boot to Vista and then check the diskmgmt.msc. It should show Drive 0 and C: saying Boot, system..

If you boot to Windows 7, it should show Disk 1 as C: and Boot, system, etc.

You can also do a search for bootmgr.exe (hidden system file) and it will be on Drive 0, or the Vista install, but not on the windows 7 drive. The Boot folder will also be on the Vista Drive but not the Windows 7 drive.

If what I say seems to be correct, you can remove the vista drive(unplug) and then do a startup repair to the Windows 7 drive and all should be oK. It will take two passes for the startup repair to fix the situation.

Sorry to anyone that already said this.

 

[gregrocker]

If what I say seems to be correct, you can remove the vista drive(unplug) and then do a startup repair to the Windows 7 drive and all should be oK. It will take two passes for the startup repair to fix the situation.

.

Would really like to hear from anyone who tries this.

Please also check the Startup Repair "Problems Found" log before restarting to note exactly what repair it applied in case it starts up reclaiming the C: drive.

Win7 might even have the ability to reassume the C; drive just by unplugging the Vista and restarting. We already know it has allowed itself to be C: relative to the others since the RC or RTM build.

This is completely different approach than trying to change drive letter in registry.