Vista - Vista dual boot change XP drive letter???

I searched all over and I haven't found a solution, but I know there has to got to be way to do this. I shrank my XP 64 partition and booted from the Vista 64 disk and installed on the unallocated space. Everything works except:

When I boot into Vista 64 my XP 64 partition is drive D:, how do I change the XP partition to any letter but D:? D: has all my data (when booted into XP 64).

I've read that it can't be done, but there has got to be a way, if I had a 3 partition triple boot one of those partitions would be something other than D:.

Thanks,
Clay

The solution is to use a 3rd party boot manager. These usually allow you to
"hide" the operating system that you are NOT booted up to. Both of the
operating system partitions will be seen as partition C: when in use. The
other partitions will retain their original partition designation - so your
partition D: will be seen as such from BOTH operating systems.

A side benefit is that the non active operating system is pretty much immune
to virus infections etc. that may infect the operating system you are using
when you get infected. Because it is hidden it can not be written to!

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


"msftnobueno" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:49021e8fede9d427703d245b6c58effe@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Depending on how you switch operating systems, you may have some success
with

Disk Management > Right-click drive > 'Change drive letter and paths' >
.......

--
Jon


"msftnobueno" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:49021e8fede9d427703d245b6c58effe@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Good advice. One of the best, if not the best boot managers, which I have
used, is VistaBoot Pro found here: http://www.vistabootpro.org/. It is not
only compatible with XP and Vista but also Windows 7. A little searching and
you might be able to find this utility for free on some sites that had this
for download in the past.

"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OWWUkXnsJHA.4324@xxxxxx

Anyone have experience hiding partitions with Acronis disk director 10? or anther boot manager?

I checked out the vistabootpro site and it seems a little suspect, the reviews listed on the home page can't be found, I couldn't find it on download.com, and the ratings I did find are not good.

Disk Director 10 is not a boot manager. But it can hide partitions. It is a
bit involved, if you ask me, to use this for selecting which operating
system you want to boot into.

I have been using System Commander since about 1993. It has gone through
many version upgrades to where it is now. I am still using the version that
came out in 2000 (without any problems) to boot between Vista, Windows XP
and Windows 7.

See http://eu.v-com.com/product/System_Commander_Home.html

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience



"msftnobueno" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:bec33fa98ff9c65e59e815d2bff7a53e@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Sorry, I should have been more speciifc. Acronis DD 10 includes a boot manager called Acronis OS selector, I don't know if you can only install that program and not the entire suite. Here's one review:
Dual Booting Tutorial and Review of Acronis Disk Director

I'd rather use Acronis because I have used true image to partition and clone in the past without any problems.

Regardless, since I already have a dual boot setup which operating system should I install the boot manager from? Or can it boot/install from a CD, or does it even matter?

Thanks,
Clay

Acronis OS Selector can install within any current Window operating system
if I remember correctly. I do not know if it can hide the partition of the
O/S that is not being utilized. Others may be able to tell you more.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience



"msftnobueno" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:710df345c1a1a61239097e54d18731fc@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Thanks. I've been messing around with acronis and it won't hide xp because that partition is active. So I think the only way to do this is to restore XP, then use system commander or anther boot manager to hide the XP partition, then boot from the Vista CD and reinstall Vista, then boot from the boot manager CD and restore the mbr that was created by the manager. That should allow both OSs to be hidden from each other.

So anyone know the best way to restore XP?

On Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:27:15 -0500, msftnobueno
<guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote:
I assume the XP64 partition is the Windows Vista system partition. Run
registry editor, go to MountedDevices, and right click on
\DosDevices\D: and use the rename command to changed D to some other
letter.