Mick

iTrader: (1)

Can i change drive letter of boot drive from E: to C: ??? In administrative tools in WinXP it says you can't change boot drive letter.
I originally tried to set up my system with an Me & XP dual boot - have failed & given up on being able to run ME drive.
Runing only XP drive which is now setup as E: drive. It would be very helpful to be able to run it as C: - can it be done without reinstalling windows???

thanks

Mick

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

I take it that the ME partition/drive was installed first? In which case Windows is correct - no, you can't change E:\ to C:\, because E:\ is not the boot drive. This is because the boot sector is on the C:\ partition along with ME, not on the E:\ partition. You may not be using that partition/drive for anything else, but the boot sector is still there. If you did somehow make E:\ into C:\ then the computer wouldn't boot because it has no boot sector.


M

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

You can change the drive letter but there is a possibility of messing things up.

If you want to try then do the following, however back up all of your data first if it is important to you.

Right click on my computer, select manage and this will then bring up a little application.
Click on storage, and then disk management. You will see your drives there, right click on the c drive and change that to z: or something similar, then change the E: to c:\.

You could then boot from a windows xp cd, and go to the repair console on that, This will ask you which installation you wish to repair (I dont know if it will show up the me install though) once there (its like a dos prompt) type help, there are 2 commands for boot records, one is fixmbr but I cant remember the other but there will be a description next to it. I think the other option is to make a new boot record and this is the option that you want.

lightning101

Just use ghost to make a drive image on the E: partition then format the C: partition and make it the primary partition then restore the image

Mick

iTrader: (1)

The XP Drive will boot up on it's own... but always as E:

The drive with ME on it was partitioned into 2 drives which made up the C: and D: I set the C: drive as boot initially but then couldn't get to the XP drive

I guess I probably messed up the dual boot by formating the XP drive with NTFS which the ME OS cannot read???

I then made sure XP could at least boot up on it's own. then added access to the storage on the ME drive even though I couldn't use the OS.

Anyway what i really want is to be able to run the XP drive clean and leave the 2nd drive in and disconnected most of the time but able to be connected and run ME for old kids games - compatability mode just doesn't work for a lot of the old software... they are growing out of these old games now so hopefully won't be required for long...

I suppose clean install of ME on 2nd drive as a master will sort that bit out...

Cheers

Mick

jpor

iTrader: (1)

Can you not change the boot order in the BIOS?
I.e instead of Hdisk0 booting have Hdisk1 to boot instead.

Mick

iTrader: (1)

@jpor - yep I guess that would work...

But to be honest it's quicker just to pull the power lead off the main hard drive having left BIOS to auto detect both drives...

Mick

jpor

iTrader: (1)

I do seem to recall a utillity that will allow you to boot different O/Ses. Maybe worth having a look on www.download.com