Wrong OS Drive letter

G

gallicbear

New Member
Hi there. Hoping that someone might notice this... I am dealing with this older PC, which has Vista 64bit and XP 64bit Pro. installed as double boot. Both systems boot fine. However, XP was installed AFTER Vista. So when you boot into XP, the system assigns Drive Letter D: to XP, and Vista remains at C:. I have reinstalled XP. Didn't change anything. Vista still asserts itself. I have used the tips of changing the registry with Mounted Devices, renaming and restarting. That messes up things and XP will no longer boot. So I had to restore it with an image backup. One of those challenges. What if I do the Regedit thing of changing the Drive letter ONLY for Vista, which has a C:? Will the XP system automatically set itself at C: at reboot? Thanks in advance for guiding me in that.
 

My Computer

System One

Welcome to the Forums.


XP isn't finicky about drive letters like Vista and Windows 7. I had a dual boot system with Windows 7 booting as C:. When I booted Windows 7 it thought XP was on D:. When I booted XP it saw itself as on drive H:.

Everything worked fine though. If you want both OS to think they boot as C: then you are likely to get into some trickery not easy to maintain. As far as i know XP can be on any drive letters other than A: and B:.

If you are restoring XP from an image of C: you might have issues. But to do an ordinary install of XP it should not care what it is on.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
Thanks, MilesAhead. That helps me decide. BTW, I see that you are still using Vista. I am using the newer ones, too (7, 8.1, 10), but I enjoy older, vintage machines. Those systems had their own charms.
 

My Computer

System One

gallicbear said:
Thanks, MilesAhead. That helps me decide. BTW, I see that you are still using Vista. I am using the newer ones, too (7, 8.1, 10), but I enjoy older, vintage machines. Those systems had their own charms.
Click to expand...

Yes I used to have a desktop with vista 64 bit. Unfortunately I only have a Laptop running Windows 8.0 these days. I do have an image of Vista x64 for loading in a virtual machine if I need to try something out under it.

The thing I miss most is the glass. I have the Big Muscle Dll to enable glass in W8 but it just isn't the same. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
Meanwhile, after searching some more, I found out that this is a normal thing. When Vista is installed before XP, Vista remains C: drive, no matter which OS you boot into. I discovered that on a forum of Neosmart (EasyBCD) from a dual-boot guru who has dealt with this subject for years. No sense changing things around.
 

My Computer

System One

gallicbear said:
Meanwhile, after searching some more, I found out that this is a normal thing. When Vista is installed before XP, Vista remains C: drive, no matter which OS you boot into. I discovered that on a forum of Neosmart (EasyBCD) from a dual-boot guru who has dealt with this subject for years. No sense changing things around.
Click to expand...

I had a 486 PC with Dos,Windows, OS/2 and a couple of variations of RedHat Linux(boot into various custom kernels) all multi-boot on 2 physical drives. I think it went Dos, then Windows had to be on C: until it got to NT. OS/2 could boot from a primary or logical partition. It didn't care. After XP Windows wanted to be on C: again. But now with GPT and UEFI it gets funkier. I don't think I'll attempt any multi-boot setups until I have a guinea pig machine. :)
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
It's not that difficult. Over the last few years I've done much dual-booting, between different Windows or Windows & Linux. It works great. Never ran into problems. As far as UEFI, there are ways to change settings in your BIOS.
 

My Computer

System One

gallicbear said:
It's not that difficult. Over the last few years I've done much dual-booting, between different Windows or Windows & Linux. It works great. Never ran into problems. As far as UEFI, there are ways to change settings in your BIOS.
Click to expand...

Most things are only tricky the first time. Having only one machine I depend on is not the time to take the plunge. I'll wait until I have a workbench full of machines. Besides, I did so much of it before it's kind of been there done that. Rather than multi-boot I want to have multiple PCs running various OS networked together. So whatever task I want to do I can just go to the system that is already running the preferred tools.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavilion m9515y
    CPU
    Phenom X4 9850
    Memory
    8 GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Some Radeon Cheapie with 512 MB Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    CRT
    Screen Resolution
    1280x1024
    Hard Drives
    750 GB SATA 3G
    2 SIIG Superspeed docks w/WD Caviar Black Sata II or III
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