Manage your drive letters in a dual-boot configuration
Thu, 05/24/2007 - 21:54 — Ciprian
As many other people, I installed Windows Vista on my system but I decided to keep Windows XP for gaming and other tasks which, at least for now, work better on XP. When you have multiple partitions and hard disks, one of the challenges of having a dual boot system is keeping the same drive letters in both operating systems.
When I installed Windows Vista for the first time I did not pay attention to this detail and had them assigned in a confusing way. In Windows XP, the "cinema" partition had the letter G: and in Windows Vista "H:", while the "lavoro" (work) partition had the letter "D:" in Windows XP and "E:" in Windows Vista.
That confused not only myself but also the other users that worked on the same computer. So... what can you do to avoid such a scenario?
Learn how to assign your drive letters in a dual-boot configuration
When you decide to have a dual-boot configuration you should reserve two partitions (and two drive letters) for the operating systems. Windows XP will be placed on the drive with the letter "C:". When you install Windows Vista and log in, it will see itself as being installed on "C:" and Windows XP on another partition. The "problem" is that, while you can change the drive letter for the Windows Vista partition when you are in Windows XP, when you are in Windows Vista you cannot change the drive letter assigned for the XP partition.
It will always give you an error message saying: "Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your volume. This may happen if your volume is a system or boot volume, or has page files".
In this case you should write down the drive letter for the XP partition that was assigned in Windows Vista. Then you should boot back to Windows XP and change the drive letter for the Windows Vista partition to the same letter.
For example, if in Windows Vista, the XP partition has the letter "D:", then you should boot in Windows XP and assign the letter "D:" to the Windows Vista partition. Now, depending on the operating system you boot in, the letters "C:" and "D:" will represent the operating systems.
For the rest of your partitions you can change the drive letters and assign them in the same way for both operating systems. This way you will always know where your work, music or games are stored and you won't get confused every time you boot to a different Windows operating system.
How to change a drive letter in Windows Vista
Close all running applications, go to Control Panel and then to System and Maintenance. Now click on Administrative Tools.
From the list of available tools, double-click on Computer Management.
If you are using the Classic View for the Control Panel, just go directly to Administrative Tools and there you will find Computer Management.
Computer Management has several sections. Go to Storage and click on Disk Management.
You will see a list with all the hard disk drives and all the partitions. Right-click on the partition you want to change and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
In the Change Drive Letter of Path window select the new drive letter that you want to assign and click on OK.
Now you will receive a warning like the one below. Click on Yes and the drive letter will be changed.
How to change a drive letter in Windows XP
The procedure is identical to the one for Windows Vista. Just go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management. From there you follow the same procedure and you are done.
Final Comments
If you follow this procedure, you should have the same drive letters for all your partitions except the ones where the operating systems are installed. For example, in Windows XP, you will see XP on drive "C:" and Windows Vista on drive "D:" and in Windows Vista you will see XP on drive "D:" and Windows Vista on drive "C:".
Related articles:
How to manage your disks using only Windows Vista's Disk Management tool
How to install Windows Vista
How To Uninstall Windows Vista Using EasyBCD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.
Microsoft, Windows and the Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft Corporation in no way endorses or is affiliated with www.vista4beginners.com.
All other products mentioned are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of their respective companies.
Comments
If this is just to know
If this is just to know which partition has which content, I simply give the different partitions names (i.e., Pictures) and not worry about the drive letter. I'm using Vista, though, so I'm not sure if partitions can be named in XP in the same way.
Overcoming Windows Choice of Drive-Letters in Multi-Boot System
My computer has several SCSI Hard Disk Drives installed. Whenever I decide to install a new Windows operating system, I restart the computer and use CTRL+A to access the SCSI controller SCSISelect BIOS. Here I can modify the booting order among the various Hard Disks, and I choose the SCSI ID of the intended Hard Disk to become the first boot device.
Next, I restart and install the new Windows O/S onto the newly chosen Hard Disk, and this automatically causes C:\ to be assigned to the new Windows O/S. Note that just before installing Windows I use the Recovery Console MAP ARC command to verify the correct numbering for all drives as referred to in the boot.ini file, to ensure correct multibooting to all previously installed Windows O/S's in the new boot order.
Thus, every Windows O/S "thinks" it is installed on C:/ when it is operating, and I can assign drive letters at will to all data Hard Disks.
What I do easily with SCSI can probably be done with more difficulty with IDE or SATA by accessing the main BIOS of the computer and modifying booting order among Hard Disks. This will require care and much thought before trying, since tampering with Master and Slave in IDE is not as simple as changing boot order in SCSI.
Vista then XP
I have just purchased a computer that has Vista installed on it. I tried to install Quick Book, but Vista is not compatible with it. So I tried to install XP but since Vista is on it already, it won't let be to install XP. Any help is appreciated in advance.
Bruce
search
Search "install Vista" on our site and you will find an article with references to many guides, including one that shows you how to install Windows XP on top of Windows Vista.
soloution found
if you want your drive letters under vista other than the system drive and the other operating systems system drive to match what you had under XP before you can do the following.
I will assume that you are in the situation where vista sees itself as C and the XP partition and everything between the XP and vista partitions slid one lettter.
shut down vista and boot off the gparted livecd
right click the windows XP partition and select manage flags. select the hidden flag.
close gparted and shut down the livecd, boot back into vista
move other drives arround to match what you have under XP (the XP system drive will have no drive letter associated at this point, don't let that concern you)
shut down vista and back to the gparted livecd
right click the windows XP partition and select manage flags. deselect the hidden flag.
close gparted and shut down the livecd, boot back into vista
you should find the windows XP partition has slotted neatly into the gap
Why do we still put up with arcane drive letters?
For the love of all things holy, it's embarrassing that an "advanced" operating system like Windows gets hung up because we're forced into using obsolete things like drive letters. We should be allowed to name a drive, and that's it.
XP Drive.
Vista Drive.
Data Drive.
There you go, no silly drive letters, and you're free to call the drive whatever you wish. Other OS's do it very easily, why doesn't Windows?
Is there away to set it up
Is there away to set it up setup the hard drive so its like:
Vista
C:Vista
D:data
E:xp
XP
C:xp
D:Data
E:Vista1
I need this because i have files that are already set to look into drive D. (I actually have 2 vista installs, i just used xp to clear confusion, if this makes a difference)
Solution to change the system drive letter
Very simple solution for this setup:
In XP:
C = XP
D = Data
E = Vista
In Vista:
C = Vista
D = Data
E = XP
Windows XP will let you change the drive letetr, if not, follow the same process.
First of all, Backup your registry in Vista.
Open the registry in Vista
Goto "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices"
Rename the needed device to desired drive letter like:
\DosDevices\D: -> \DosDevices\E:
and
\DosDevices\E: -> \DosDevices\D:
I just created a new data drive and there was no data in there yet. If you have data, take precautions.
There is one more entry in the registry that you should change:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup
Change the drive letter to the new drive, "E:\" in this case
Restart OS
Enjoy!!
Vista sees itself on D: - not C:
I'm not sure what happened on my install, but Vista sees itself on D: rather than C:.
I'm set for Dual boot - I had XP installed first, and while booted into XP I put my Vista install disc in and had it install in another partition on the same physical disk drive.
Regardless of which OS I boot into - XP or Vista - the drive letters are always the same. C: is XP and D: is Vista.
I'm planning on eventually moving 100% to Vista, so I'd rather have it the way you describe it *should* be - that the OS I'm booted into is always C: - that way when I'm done w/ XP (eventually), I'd be able to just format the XP partition and resize the Vista one to take the space.
However, because my Vista OS drive always sees itself as D:, that will be annoying down the road. Any idea what I did wrong so that my Vista sees itself as D: and not C:?? Any idea how to fix it?
Thanks!
Why keeping data on the same drive letter is needed
I see several comments from people wanting to keep their data on the same driver letter for Vista and XP. This is critical if you are using old software, especially per 2007 versions of MS Office.
I used MS Office XPs save my settings wizard to keep all my tweaks, add-ins, and email .pst file links when switching to a Vista machine from XP.
Guess what happened? I was smart enough to keep all my settings, add-ins and .pst file on a partitioned data drive letter with E:. But the new Vista machine was using the E: drive for a card reader device. My new data drive on the Vista Machine was G:.
So, what did MS Vista do when I tried launching Outlook, Excel, etc? The programs didn't work. The programs couldn't find data because they were looking for it on drive E:. When the launched there was no way to change the location of the .pst file, or the add-ins. MS completely locks you out of editing them when an error occurs. The programs start, but with Excel when trying to open the Tools > Options settings it opened but everything was locked down, none of the tabs on the settings worked, or opened except the default tab which couldn't be edited.
Outlook launches is a very strange way. The only thing you see in an explorer view. There is no way to load up an existing .pst file. There is not way to set up email. Geez!
The solution would up being to set the data drive to E: in Vista, by changing the drive letters of the card reader devices to release E:. These device letters can be changed if you change them from the lower graphic part of Disk Management screen. For example, right click on the drive Icon for "CD-ROM O DVD (I:)" and the change drive letter option is available there.
Hopefully, this will help out someone who gets trapped by the inability of MS OS and Office software from working correctly when transferring over to a new machine. I have a dual Vista / XP boot and am still struggling to get devices to work. No Ethernet on the XP machine working yet. Wish me luck.
Post new comment