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How can I
change the System partition drive letter
in Windows XP?
For the
most part, this is not recommended,
especially if the drive letter is the
same as when Windows was installed. The
only time that you may want to do this
is when the drive letters get changed
without any user intervention. This may
happen when you break a mirror volume or
there is a drive configuration change.
This should be a rare occurrence and you
should change the drive letters back to
match the initial installation.
To change
or swap drive letters on volumes that
cannot otherwise be changed using the
Disk Management snap-in, use the
following steps:
Note: In these
steps, drive D refers to the (wrong)
drive letter assigned to a volume, and
drive C refers to the (new) drive letter
you want to change to, or to assign to
the volume.
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Make a
full system backup of the computer
and system state.
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Log on
as an Administrator.
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Start
Regedt32.exe (or Regedit.exe in
Windows XP).
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Go to
the following registry key:
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Click
MountedDevices.
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On the
Security menu, click Permissions.
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Check
to make sure Administrators have
full control. Change this back when
you are finished with these steps.
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Quit
Regedt32.exe, and then start
Regedit.exe.
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Go to
the following registry key:
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Find
the drive letter you want to change
to (new). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
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Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then
click Rename. In Windows 2000 you
must use Regedit instead of Regedt32
to rename this registry key.
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Rename
it to an unused drive letter
"\DosDevices\Z:". (This will free up
drive letter C: to be used later.)
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Find
the drive letter you want changed.
Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
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Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then
click Rename.
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Rename
it to the appropriate (new) drive
letter "\DosDevices\C:".
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Click
the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click
Rename, and then name it back to
"\DosDevices\D:".
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Quit
Regedit, and then start Regedt32
(not required in Windows XP).
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Change
the permissions back to the previous
setting for Administrators (this
should probably be Read Only).
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Restart the computer
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