BleepingComputer.com: Changing Drive Letter In Windows XP

Hi, I recently installed XP on my desktop (Dell Inspiron 530) and I want to change the drive letter of my hard drive from I: to C: but my problem is that C: is taken up. Disk Manager won't let me change the drive letter of my hard drive, and a MS KB article says that changing the drive letter of the hard drive is not built in to Disk Manager. I just want to know, is there a third party program that will let me do this? I am the Admin on my PC.

Have you tried these steps?

How to change a drive letter

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk
Management in the left pane.

4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter
to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

5. Click Change.

6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you
want to use, and then click OK.

7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844

I'm going to assume that I: is your system drive and tell you that no, it can't be done. You can change the drive letters of all non-system volumes, but Windows won't let you change the drive letter that it's installed to. You could do it manually but all it would accomplish would be completely borking your system.

Luckily this is a fresh install. What did Windows assign C to? A card reader? If so here's my advice - unplug the card reader from the system board and install Windows again. Make sure the system drive is C, then plug 'em back in. I know it sucks, but it's your only viable option besides just living with it the way it is.

As Cohen states, a repair install of XP (or a clean install) is the only way that I know of to change the letter for the system partition.

When XP installs, it takes an inventory of drives installed. If it detects another drive (other than an optical drive/partition) already established, it moves on to the next letter that is not assigned.

A repair install with these additional drives temporarily disconnected...will place C: on the system partition.

Drive letters for any other partitions/drives may be changed in the manner outlined by DC3, with the clarification that the desired letter must not already be assigned a partition/drive.

Louis

Will a repair wipe my programs? The biggest annoyance about reinstalling Windows is loading all the programs back on. Otherwise yes I can disconnect the other drives.

If you had a MS Genuine XP CD...the answer would be a definite "No."

Since you have a Dell...you need to review the repair options Dell provides on that system.

http://support.dell.com/support/DPP/Index....&~ck=anavml

From what I see...you have a recovery partition and recovery disks...which are not the same as a copy of Genuine XP CD and cannot be used in lieu of a MS XP CD for repair purposes.

Louis

This post has been edited by hamluis: 09 August 2010 - 09:15 PM
Reason for edit: Corrected blunder :).