Vista Tutorial - Cannot remove drive letter

Hi,

I've a multi-boot setup with Drive 0 - XP and Drive 1 - Vista.
When I boot XP, I've got C: - Drive 0 and D: - Drive 1. To avoid problems,
I've removed the D letter from drive 1 under XP.
However, when I run Vista, I've got C: - Drive 1 and D: - Drive 0. Far
enough. When I try to remove the D: from Drive 0, Vista won't let me, because
it's a system drive.
Any ideas ?

Hi Ruud,

Don't. Don't even try. Drive 0 houses your boot files (it's why it is
designated the system drive), you will not be able to alter the drive letter
designation. It doesn't matter where you install Vista, the active drive on
the system will always be the one to house the boot files. By removing drive
0 from Vista, you would be removing the partition it boots from.

The only resolution to this non-problem would be to run a startup repair by
booting the Vista disk with drive 0 detached. Then, you would need to use a
new means of deciding which system to boot, most likely by changing the
primary boot drive through the system BIOS.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"Ruud Bijvank" <RuudBijvank@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:2F6D06B2-F22C-45B8-83FD-65A198163F95@microsoft.com...
> Hi,
>
> I've a multi-boot setup with Drive 0 - XP and Drive 1 - Vista.
> When I boot XP, I've got C: - Drive 0 and D: - Drive 1. To avoid problems,
> I've removed the D letter from drive 1 under XP.
> However, when I run Vista, I've got C: - Drive 1 and D: - Drive 0. Far
> enough. When I try to remove the D: from Drive 0, Vista won't let me,
> because
> it's a system drive.
> Any ideas ?

Is this true if you used your bios to designate which is the boot drive?

As Ruud described, I also have two Sata drives. XP was installed on Drive
0, however, prior to installing Vista on Drive 1, I told the BIOS to make
Drive 1 the boot drive. Then during the install, I wiped that drive, and had
Vista setup use it to install.

I have no problem switching back and forth through the bios (kind of a pain
but I'm used to it). I also have no desire to hide any disk drives from
either OS.

Also, I have not had any problems sharing or access files/folders from
either drive in either OS.

Thanks,
Erik

"Rick Rogers" wrote:

> Hi Ruud,
>
> Don't. Don't even try. Drive 0 houses your boot files (it's why it is
> designated the system drive), you will not be able to alter the drive letter
> designation. It doesn't matter where you install Vista, the active drive on
> the system will always be the one to house the boot files. By removing drive
> 0 from Vista, you would be removing the partition it boots from.
>
> The only resolution to this non-problem would be to run a startup repair by
> booting the Vista disk with drive 0 detached. Then, you would need to use a
> new means of deciding which system to boot, most likely by changing the
> primary boot drive through the system BIOS.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>
> "Ruud Bijvank" <RuudBijvank@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:2F6D06B2-F22C-45B8-83FD-65A198163F95@microsoft.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've a multi-boot setup with Drive 0 - XP and Drive 1 - Vista.
> > When I boot XP, I've got C: - Drive 0 and D: - Drive 1. To avoid problems,
> > I've removed the D letter from drive 1 under XP.
> > However, when I run Vista, I've got C: - Drive 1 and D: - Drive 0. Far
> > enough. When I try to remove the D: from Drive 0, Vista won't let me,
> > because
> > it's a system drive.
> > Any ideas ?
>
>

Hi, Erik.

You know, of course, that Disk Management lets us change all the drive
letters except the System and Boot volumes. There is (normally) only one
System Partition for the whole computer, but each operating system has its
own Boot Volume. Typically, one OS shares its boot volume with the System
Partition.

By setting Drive 1 as your boot device before running Vista Setup, you
forced Setup to write its startup files onto Drive 1 in a single-boot
configuration. If you had left Drive 0 as your boot device when installing
Vista, it would have updated the startup files there to allow you to
dual-boot without resetting the boot device in your BIOS each time.

Microsoft's dual-boot system works like a "Y" (or a tree, if there are more
than two branches). The boot process always starts in the System Partition,
then branches to wherever the \Windows folder is for the OS we choose. But
you've created two "Y" systems, each on a different hard drive, so you have
to change the BIOS to choose between them before the boot process even
starts. It's OK, if that's what you want, but since you said it's "kind of
a pain", you might want to change the startup files on one (or both) of your
HDs to create the dual-boot startup menu.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Mail 7.0 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"erikdenkers" <erikdenkers@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:CEAC4029-8CDF-4364-9B97-F8077D8A1AF9@microsoft.com...
> Is this true if you used your bios to designate which is the boot drive?
>
> As Ruud described, I also have two Sata drives. XP was installed on Drive
> 0, however, prior to installing Vista on Drive 1, I told the BIOS to make
> Drive 1 the boot drive. Then during the install, I wiped that drive, and
> had
> Vista setup use it to install.
>
> I have no problem switching back and forth through the bios (kind of a
> pain
> but I'm used to it). I also have no desire to hide any disk drives from
> either OS.
>
> Also, I have not had any problems sharing or access files/folders from
> either drive in either OS.
>
> Thanks,
> Erik
>
> "Rick Rogers" wrote:
>
>> Hi Ruud,
>>
>> Don't. Don't even try. Drive 0 houses your boot files (it's why it is
>> designated the system drive), you will not be able to alter the drive
>> letter
>> designation. It doesn't matter where you install Vista, the active drive
>> on
>> the system will always be the one to house the boot files. By removing
>> drive
>> 0 from Vista, you would be removing the partition it boots from.
>>
>> The only resolution to this non-problem would be to run a startup repair
>> by
>> booting the Vista disk with drive 0 detached. Then, you would need to use
>> a
>> new means of deciding which system to boot, most likely by changing the
>> primary boot drive through the system BIOS.
>>
>> --
>> Best of Luck,
>>
>> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
>> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
>> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
>>
>> "Ruud Bijvank" <RuudBijvank@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:2F6D06B2-F22C-45B8-83FD-65A198163F95@microsoft.com...
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I've a multi-boot setup with Drive 0 - XP and Drive 1 - Vista.
>> > When I boot XP, I've got C: - Drive 0 and D: - Drive 1. To avoid
>> > problems,
>> > I've removed the D letter from drive 1 under XP.
>> > However, when I run Vista, I've got C: - Drive 1 and D: - Drive 0. Far
>> > enough. When I try to remove the D: from Drive 0, Vista won't let me,
>> > because
>> > it's a system drive.
>> > Any ideas ?
>>
>>