Change Drive Letter In Bios

• Change Boot Drive Bios

I recently clean installed Windows XP Pro on my old Compaq. For some reason, it assigned driveletter E: to the main boot drive, C: to the Zip drive, and D: to the CD-ROM drive.

A: is still floppy. Is there any way I can cahnge the main boot drive to C:? That is the most important cahnge I want because in older versions of InstallShield, there must be some free space in the C: drive for data.

I also, however, would like my CD drive to be E:, but thats not as important.Specs:Compaq Presario 7594566 MHz Celeron128MB RAMHDD and Zip on IDE channel 0, HDD master, zip slaveCDROM on IDE Channel 1HDD: 10GB Quantum (now part of Maxtor) FireballThanks in advance for any help! Actually I want to do this too since I have 2 boot drives since I transfered the data onto a new HD and I want to use the new one to be C and it's currently I. The problem is that all my programs are pointing to the C and that's my OLD drive! I figured if I changed the name everything should be fine but when you're using XP you can change the drive letters through that method but it won't let you change the letter of the drive you are currently running the OS off of.

In the small Change Drive Letter and Paths for. Window that appears, tap or click the Change. This will open the Change Drive Letter or Path window. Choose the drive letter you want Windows to assign to this storage device by selecting it from the Assign the following drive letter: drop-down box.

Meaning changing the cd-rom, zip drives, and secondar HD aren't a problem but you still can't change your boot letter since you're running on it. At least I can't. Anyone with any ideas? Actually I want to do this too since I have 2 boot drives since I transfered the data onto a new HD and I want to use the new one to be C and it's currently I.

The problem is that all my programs are pointing to the C and that's my OLD drive! I figured if I changed the name everything should be fine but when you're using XP you can change the drive letters through that method but it won't let you change the letter of the drive you are currently running the OS off of. Meaning changing the cd-rom, zip drives, and secondar HD aren't a problem but you still can't change your boot letter since you're running on it. At least I can't. Anyone with any ideas? In your case PartitionMagic might be of help, beacuse you have two drives. Unplugging your other drives and booting up the computer might fool Win98 or ME but it won't fool XP.

Your OS drive letter will still be the same and the other drives will come back in as they were.Changing drive letters will work on your other drives by first creating an empty spot for the lowest letter drive. This will require you to move your intended last drive up an extra letter to start with, move the other drives to the letter you desire them to be, then move the last drive back down. It's a little tricky but you can figure it out I'm sure.I think you're going to reinstall. I would unhook the ZIP drive, make certain your hard drive is pinned master and on IDE/0 and on the end of the ribbon cable. During the install delete the partition and let XP create a new one.

This will insure a clean install from scratch. With this setup I don't see any reason why it won't come in as drive C. Your CD-ROM will be D. Later add your ZIP and it will be E.

If you are wanting an extra partition create it when you first get to the desktop. Change your drive letters around so it is D, and move the others up one letter. Of course this will require you to leave the space for this partition when letting XP create its OS partition during the install process.Good luck. I don't have XP, so maybe this is not germane.To the original poster, are you sure you are Master/Slave jumpered? If that 10 gig is one partition, you could not have installed to the E drive, as that would have been the zip. Win assigns letters as Pri Master; C, Sec Master: D, in your case CD-ROM, Pri Slave; E, your Zip.

In your case, E as the OS drive, you would have to have the 1 gig Jazz drive to even approach a full install's space requirement.Win in any other flavor would not do that.dg, how did you transfer? Did you Ghost it, or some other utility, or did you just install and let it install to where it wanted to? You always, in my non-XP experience, choose where to install to. Did you have the option?wulf, in your case, with ME, not 98ME, either 98 or ME, did you install to your selected partition? If you had ME (or 98 ) installed (older OS has to be installed first ) you would have a true dual boot system, a choice on bootup, and( I can't believe it) no going into BIOS to select.Keep us posted.Cheers,George. I actually used the program that came along with my maxtor HD to transfer the data.

Basically my new drive is a 250gb drive split into 2 partitions a 50 and a 200gb. The first of course is the 50 which has an exact duplicate of my OS. I was actually planning to take out the C drive completely and put the new drive into that place but it seems like someone said it wouldn't work. I have 3 hard drives and the C drive is the master to the D drive so I wanted to try to make the new drive the master to the D drive and hopefully it will read as C. Well I'll test it and if it doesnt work then back to the drawing board! If you plan to take out the old drive then this should work (WinXP).

Install the new drive (temporarily) as a second drive in place of your current cdrom by using it's ribbon cable and power connector. (Just lay the case over and slip a piece of cardboard between the new drive and the side of the case to keep from shorting it out). Boot normally (with 2 hard drives now) and create the partitions you want on the new drive using the 'Administrative Tools' in the Control Panel. Now use Norton's Ghost feature of 'Clone' to duplicate your old hard drive to your new hard drive. (with 50 GB and 200 GB you should have no 'space' problems.

I'm not sure but I think the 'Clone' feature started with Norton 2003 version. Shut down, remove the old drive and replace with the new in it's original place (jumper should still be 'single or master' ) and boot without the cdrom. Check the drive letters and if all looks well shutdown and reconnect the cdrom and any zip drives you might have. Should be ok. Unplugging your other drives and booting up the computer might fool Win98 or ME but it won't fool XP. Your OS drive letter will still be the same and the other drives will come back in as they were.Changing drive letters will work on your other drives by first creating an empty spot for the lowest letter drive.

This will require you to move your intended last drive up an extra letter to start with, move the other drives to the letter you desire them to be, then move the last drive back down. It's a little tricky but you can figure it out I'm sure.I think you're going to reinstall. I would unhook the ZIP drive, make certain your hard drive is pinned master and on IDE/0 and on the end of the ribbon cable.

During the install delete the partition and let XP create a new one. This will insure a clean install from scratch. With this setup I don't see any reason why it won't come in as drive C. Your CD-ROM will be D. Later add your ZIP and it will be E. If you are wanting an extra partition create it when you first get to the desktop. Change your drive letters around so it is D, and move the others up one letter.

Of course this will require you to leave the space for this partition when letting XP create its OS partition during the install process.Good luck. Actually, I'm not planning to re-install the OS, I did less than a month agoI don't understand your second paragraph.

'empty spot'?? To the original poster, are you sure you are Master/Slave jumpered? If that 10 gig is one partition, you could not have installed to the E drive, as that would have been the zip. Win assigns letters as Pri Master; C, Sec Master: D, in your case CD-ROM, Pri Slave; E, your Zip. In your case, E as the OS drive, you would have to have the 1 gig Jazz drive to even approach a full install's space requirement. Well, here's the story: The PC originaly came with HDD 10GB divided into C: and D:, the CDROM E: and of course FDD A. It had Win98SE.

Change Boot Drive Bios

Then I installed XP (upgrade), same driveletters etc. Then, I decided to clean intsall WinXP Pro SP1, but this time with the HDD in one partition. BUT, I foolishly put in the zip100 drive at the same time, and then installed XP. The HD came out E:, the ZIP C:, the FDD A:, and the CDROM D. To the original poster, are you sure you are Master/Slave jumpered?

If that 10 gig is one partition, you could not have installed to the E drive, as that would have been the zip. Win assigns letters as Pri Master; C, Sec Master: D, in your case CD-ROM, Pri Slave; E, your Zip. In your case, E as the OS drive, you would have to have the 1 gig Jazz drive to even approach a full install's space requirement. Well, here's the story: The PC originaly came with HDD 10GB divided into C: and D:, the CDROM E: and of course FDD A. It had Win98SE. Then I installed XP (upgrade), same driveletters etc. Then, I decided to clean intsall WinXP Pro SP1, but this time with the HDD in one partition.

BUT, I foolishly put in the zip100 drive at the same time, and then installed XP. The HD came out E:, the ZIP C:, the FDD A:, and the CDROM D./quoteThat sounds to me like adding the Zip, you had it jumpered as Master, and the HDD either as Slave or possibly Cable Select, CS.If your machine is like every other Compaq, Dell, Gateway I've seen, if you only have 1 IDE device, you have a single connector cable. If you added the Zip, you would have to replace that with a standard dual device cable. Is your layout such that you had to connect the end of that wire to the Zip? Especially with Cable select, that guarantees the Zip will be Master, C:, the HDD will be Primary Slave, E. I don't understand your second paragraph.

'empty spot'??I was trying to explain how to rearrange the drive letters in XP's Disk Managment program.Lets say I had:C=OSD=CD/ROME=DVDF=Video HDDand I wanted:D=Video HDDE=CD/ROMF=DVDI would first make the DVD=G, change the CD/ROM to E, change the Video HDD to D, then the DVD to F. This can be done in XP by right/clicking on the drive and choosing 'Change Drive Letter'. The 'empty spot' was created when I moved the DVD to G. Thank you, I will try it.gmatov, thanks for your suggestion as well; I'll the jumpers/IDE cables.

This is a guide on how to change the drive letter in Windows for an external USB device like a hard drive or USB stick. Here’s a common problem that I have seen: You plug in a USB flash drive into your computer and it says ready to use, but for some reason nothing shows up in the list of drives.

Take it out, plug it back in and still nothing shows up! What’s the problem? Well, it could be several things, but the most common issue is that the drive letter Windows is trying to assign to your device is already taken by another device or is mapped to a network drive.Sadly, Windows does not always figure this out by itself (which is should) and your drive is basically lost in computer neverland.

In order to fix it, we need to go to Computer Management and assign the drive letter manually. There are two ways to get to the Computer Management dialog in Windows, one through Control Panel and the second by right-clicking Computer and choosing Manage.Right-click My ComputerComputer Management in Administrative ToolsClick on Disk Management under the Storage section and the right side will show you all of the current drives and partitions on your drive.

If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, just find the drive you are looking for in the graphs at the bottom. They are usually named Disk 0, Disk 1, CD-ROM, CD-ROM1, etc. If you’re looking for a USB flash drive, you’ll see the word “ Removable” underneath Disk X. In my case, it’s the I: drive that is removable. However, if you have a large USB hard drive connected, then it may show up as an additional hard disk like mine shown below (H:).

By default, Windows gave my portable USB drive the letter H. If your drive has no letter or you want to change it, then right-click in the white space to the right of the drive letter and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths.Click the Change button in the dialog box and then pick a new letter from the drop-down list. Just for your info, the Mount in the following NTFS folder option is used if you had right clicked on an external hard drive and instead of giving it a drive letter, you wanted to just have it show up as a folder on your current hard drive. That means you could create a folder in My Documents called pictures that actually points to another hard drive instead of one where all of your My Documents are currently stored.Click Ok twice and your drive should now have the new letter assigned. Usually, if the USB stick was not showing up before, once you change the letter, it will automatically pop up and ask you what you want to do. That’s about it! You can also use Disk Management to format disks, determine the type of File System and see the amount of free space available.