Dual boot drive letters

I have a laptop that is set-up to dual boot windows 98 and Windows 2000 pro.

Windows 98 installed on IDE0 Part #1
Windows 2000 pro installed on Part #2
Cd-rom drive installed on IDE1

In 98 the drive letters are C: part 1, D: part 2, and E: cd-rom which I have changed to "Q" due to a mapped network drive used all over my company as "E". (This is what is causing the real problem, that someone didn't have any more forethought than to use "E" as the main network drive.)

In 2000 the drive letters are C: part 1, D: cd-rom, and E: part 2

I cannot change the drive letter of the system directory in windows 2000. Is there some method I'm missing?

The only two ways I can think of to fix this are:

1) To repartition my hard drive with three partitions and reinstall windows 2000 in the third partition, which I assume would be "F", but I'm not sure. Then "E" would not be the system drive and I could edit (change) the drive letter. OR

2) I could copy my windows 2000 cd-rom to my C drive, and physically remove the laptop cd-rom drive and install windows 2000 from C-drive without a cd-rom installed in the machine. (Hopefully that would make the system drive "D" and I could later reinstall my cd-rom and it would presumably be "E", in which case I could just change the drive letter.


What I would really like is a third alternative that doesn’t require me to reload windows 2000(again), or to at least know if either of my solutions would likely work.

Any Ideas?

Thanks
-Craig

Hi Craig,

You should be able to change the drives letters by going to Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management, right-click on the drive you wish to change and choose "Change drivve letters and paths". I'm using XP Pro at the minute, but I'm 99% sure it's exactly the same in Win2000.

Sparks, Thanks for your reply.

It IS exactly the same as "XP-pro" However:

"windows cannot modify the drive letter of the system volume or the boot volume"

At least that's the message that pops up when I try to reassign the drive letter. I just tried it in "XP-pro" and it’s the same there also. Doing that WILL let me change any other volume.

The problem is for some reason with this Toshiba Laptop windows 2000 installs the second partition as "E" and not "D" like every other machine and operating system I've used. Since I'm dual booting and using the second partition for windows 2000, the second partition IS my “system” partition. (at least while I'm in windows 2000) While I'm in windows 98 all is fine.

Any further Ideas?

Technically, in Microsoft's terminology, the drive where the Windows operating system is installed is called the boot drive, and the drive where the boot files are located is called the system drive. That's Uncle Bill for you :)

That doesn't matter here though, because you can't change the drive letter of either one with the management console. But that's OK, there's a sneaky workaround. Be forewarned, Windows 2000 can detect a system that is not backed up, and it will find a way make you sorry you heard the term "boot drive" if you tamper with the registry. If you break it, you own all the pieces.

Microsoft lets the secret out of the bag at the Knowledge Base, in the article titled "HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows".

There are links to other pages that may come into play after you attempt this move, particularly the one about not being able to log in after the drive letter changes.

Remember -- all the pieces.

Good luck.

One way I can think of to fix the situation would be to uninstall w2k and "hide" the 98 partition before you reinstall. That'll make w2k think it's being installed on C: as it can't see the first partition. It'll also keep all the w2k boot files on the w2k OS partition.

Doing it this way will make the other OS invisible so you may want another data partition for files you want to share between OS's.

Then when you boot either OS, it'll show it's installed on C: with D: as the data partition.

Edit: You'll need a boot manager like BootMagic or similar to do this.