How did I screw up?

[trulad]

Somehow while trying to format my second hard drive(drive D) I screwed up and now my "C" drive is Drive_C(E). Thats the way it shows up in "My Computer". None of my programs will access it because they all look for "Drive_C". Disk management won't allow me to change it. How can I get it back?
Trulad

[Panama Red]

This is directly from Help in Disk Management(Win XP)


To assign, change, or remove a drive letter
Using the Windows interface

Open Computer Management (Local).
In the console tree, click Disk Management.
Where?

Computer Management (Local)
Storage
Disk Management

Right-click a partition, logical drive, or volume, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Do one of the following:
To assign a drive letter, click Add, click the drive letter you want to use, and then click OK.
To modify a drive letter, click it, click Change, click the drive letter you want to use, and then click OK.
To remove a drive letter, click it, and then click Remove.
Important

Be careful when making drive-letter assignments because many MS-DOS and Windows programs make references to a specific drive letter. For example, the path environment variable shows specific drive letters in conjunction with program names.
Notes

To open Computer Management, click Start, and then click Control Panel. Click Performance and Maintenance, click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Computer Management.
You must be logged on as a computer administrator in order to complete this procedure.
A computer can use up to 26 drive letters. Drive letters A and B are reserved for floppy disk drives, but you can assign these letters to removable drives if the computer does not have a floppy disk drive. Hard disk drives in the computer receive letters C through Z, while mapped network drives are assigned drive letters in reverse order (Z through B).
You cannot change the drive letter of the system volume or boot volume.
An error message may appear when you attempt to assign a letter to a volume, CD-ROM drive, or other removable media device, possibly because it is in use by a program in the system. If this happens, close the program accessing the volume or drive, and then click the Change Drive Letter and Paths command again.
Windows 2000 and Windows XP allow the static assignment of drive letters on volumes, partitions, and CD-ROM drives. This means that you permanently assign a drive letter to a specific partition, volume, or CD-ROM drive. When you add a new hard disk to an existing computer system, it will not affect statically assigned drive letters.
You can also mount a local drive at an empty folder on an NTFS volume using a drive path instead of a drive letter. For more information, click Related Topics.

[andyms18a]

shut down and remove the second hard drive and then reboot the computer and see if the drive letters change back if it dose remove the drive with xp on it and conect the other drive then boot with a win98 boot disk run fdisk and remove the non dos partition shut down again conect the xp drive and reboot go to control panall admin tools computer management disk management select the blank drive and partition it then format to ntfs it shod now work ok

[trulad]

It's my "C" drive that has changed to "Drive _C (E)". It used to be just "Drive_C" and now my programs can't find it. All of my programs are still there. As a precaution I moved my files over to the "D" drive. When I try to change the drive letter in Disc Management I get the message"Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume". Will I have to do a reformat?
Trulad

[mrlucio]

I get this mix up sometimes also. Usually when I format a system I usuualyy just keep one drive attached and install the OS. Once the OS is up, just attach the drive and you should be ready to go

[andyms18a]

do you have partition majic if you do start it and run drive mapper to remap your programs to the d drive or try my first post segestion

[trulad]

Thanks for all of your suggestions, I tried them all including doing it in DOS but Windows will not let you delete or re-assign drive letters for boot partitions. I gave up and am now 15% into the re-formatting(yuk)
Trulad

[Panama Red]

There is a way to do it with Partition Magic. There's a feature called Drive Mapping that lets you reassign drive letters and it then changes all the necessary files.

[crjdriver]

There is a way to change the system drive letter. Here is the mskb article that explains how to do it.