Printable View
hello
last time i did a format and install of windows xp my drive letters got messed up, plan on doing it again tonight. how can i specify what drives get wat letters befor i install (the C drive in particular) since everything else can be changed later
when i fdisk and format i made a primary dos partition last time that has to be done correct? or is that what pushed my drive leters off
The windows install should format for you....you don't need to run fdisk yourself.
This is how your drives are assigned letters:
Primary Master - Primary Partitions
Primary Slave - Primary Partitions
Secondary Master - Primary Partitions
Secondar Slave - Primary Partitions
Extended:
Primary Master - Logical Paritions
Primary Slave - Logical Paritions
Secondary Master - Logical Partitions
Secondary Slave - Logical Partitions
In windows many of these drive assignments can be changed (specific to Windows, though). So if you reinstalled windows that is why your drive letters changed.
When you fdisk, you should be able to choose what letters you want for whatever drives. I think they can all be changed once you get back into windows tho... with the exception maybe being on the C drive or where the windows directory is kept. But don't quote me on that ;)
go ahead and quote him
you can't change the names of the windows directory drive or the active drive. Other than that have at it...it's easiest to set it up from windows install, you don't need to fdisk first, you don't need a dos partition. When you set up partitions in windows it will give primary partitions drive letters first, then extended partitions, be aware of that. Xei posted that but I thought it'd make more sense if i wrote it that way :)
Other than that you can use various partition managing programs to change drive letters, and you can use linux to do it as well (if it has a paritition manager with that distro). But if you do, you'll have to change system variables...I'm not sure how many there are, if i remember it's just a handful (ie: %systemroot%)