Screwy Drive Letters in XP Pro!

[LawyerRon]

I just built my new system and installed XP Pro on an fresh WD 80gb hhd. When I installed XP, I think I made a minor mistake when I partitioned my 80gb drive; I wanted 2 partitions so I chose 40gb for the 1st partion. I did not format the second partion, which I also intended to be 40gb.

When I installed XP, I had my old 30gb Maxtor installed as a slave. It had all my data files that I intended to copy over.

Both hard drives where on the primary IDE channel with an 80 wire ribbon cable; the new drive was at the end (black) and the old drive with the data in the middle (grey), the blue connector was on the mobo.

Here's what happened after I got XP fully installed:

(Everything went fine btw)

I ended up with XP installed on "drive G" (1st partition on the WD 80gb drive). Drives C, D, E were the partitions on the second hard drive (old Maxtor 30gb)

I've even unplugged the second drive and the primary drive still shows up as G.

So what I want to know is how to I get the "primary" partition with the XP OD on it to be "C" and all the the other drive letters to fall in place?

Everyting works fine, I can see all partitions, it's just that they are all out of order.

[newme]

you can change it manually

Right click [My Computer]
Click [Manage] to open the Computer Management Console
In the top or lower right pane, right click the disk you want to change.
Fixed drives appear in the top and bottom pane. Removable drives appear in the bottom pane unless they have media inserted in which case they appear in both the upper and lower pane.
Select [Change Drive Letter and Path]
Click [Change]
Select the new letter from the drop down list box and click [OK]

[reboot]

No, you can't. C will not allow you to change it, nor will G probably because it contains the running OS.
The only way, is to remove the second drive, and using a DOS disk, us fdisk/mbr and sys on the drive you want as C.
Once that's done, boot to Windows, and nothing will work, because Windows will be looking for all it's files on G:.
Basically, you'r hooped, unless you want to format and re-fdisk, and reinstall everyuthing.

[newme]

thanks for the lesson reboot

[LawyerRon]

"nor will G probably because it contains the running OS"

Jim is correct; G did contain the running OS. I just reformatted and un-screwed everything.

[TimPoet]

would that our lives were so easy to unscrew...