My OS DRIVE and other DRIVE letters changed

[arulprakash]

Could u help me that i am in hurry to reformat my XP SP2 to put another OS XP SP3 or Windows 7.
Actually, some weeks ago, my OS normally went smooth. By one day, it didn't boot at all, saying NTLDR is missing, in so many ways i tried as safemode, making system boot with XP setup Cd to make it repair my current OS directory to make it reinstall. But it didn't ask the options to repair the current OS drive/directory. So i continue as same as we format the OS drive again, then we install our freesh OS. Same as i did, but not formatting the current OS drive, just i continued into the same drive and folder[\windows\..] to overwrite . But before that, i want to tell about the format for which drive a new OS has to install. By shockingly i saw C: drive has changed to D: drive letter, also other drive ltters also changed. But i know the first priority bootable SATA HDD and it's partitions.
Actually i had 2 seagate SATA HDD drives as 500GB and 250GB.
In 500GB as 1st bootable drive as OS, divided into 5 partitions.
In 250GB as 2nd priority[no OS or windows folders], divided into same as 500GB as 5 partitions.
In 500GB, 1st partition[OS drive C:] went as 2nd drive letter as D:, also other 4 partition became as I:, J:, K:, L:
Then 2nd SATA HDD drive-250GB, 1st partiton letter became as C:, other 25GB's 4 partition became as E:, F:, G:, H:

So i continued to install into D: drive to finish off the OS installation.
So this is the problem i am facing right now.
How to correct those drive letters by priority as my new SATA 500Gb as my 1 st bootable HDD[500GB->5partition->C,D,E,F,G] and 2nd SATA HDD 250Gb->H,I,J,K,L

Please help me how to fix this problem, let me know how is this happened that the drive letters changed?!

Thanking you,
arul prakash

[javanoob101]

You could go into the control panel then click on admistrator tools then click on preformance then once it loads click on disk managment (I think I forget and I'm at school with my limited account so I can't check) then right click on your drive(s) and type in a new drive letter. (Though I think you should just leave the letters alone as I don't know how the system will react so do this with caution)

Good Luck!
javanoob101

[arulprakash]

Actually, i installed new OS on the same partition as previously installed[C: became as D:], while XP setp installation, where it is asked to install on which partition, so i looked the partitions has changed as C: drive becames as D:, then my 2nd HDD drive of 250GB - H: drive became as C:.
But i selected the same partition as i know the drive name of my 1st HDD as 1 st priority HDD of 500GB, so installed on same drive on D:[ before this drive letter as C:], continued the installation, nothing formatted the drive, just overwrited.
My main query is, without formatting the whole HDD or partition, how to recover this or fix this problem.
becoz i have no backup external HDD. or Is there any other way to fix without losing the files[may be i can format only the OS drive !

[arulprakash]

Actually, i installed new OS on the same partition as previously installed[C: became as D:], while XP setp installation, where it is asked to install on which partition, so i looked the partitions has changed as C: drive becames as D:, then my 2nd HDD drive of 250GB - H: drive became as C:.
But i selected the same partition as i know the drive name of my 1st HDD as 1 st priority HDD of 500GB, so installed on same drive on D:[ before this drive letter as C:], continued the installation, nothing formatted the drive, just overwrited.
My main query is, without formatting the whole HDD or partition, how to recover this or fix this problem.
becoz i have no backup external HDD. or Is there any other way to fix without losing the files[may be i can format only the OS drive !

Note: Before this problem comes, my HDD looked like this as follow:
500GB-1 [C:]
500GB-2 [D:]
500GB-3 [E:]
500GB-4 [F:]
500GB-5 [G:]
250GB-A [H:]
250GB-B [I:]
250GB-C [J:]
250GB-D [K:]
250GB-E [L:]
CD-DRIVE[M:]

So i want to fix the problem and wanted to be same[normal] as above

[gerbil]

"But i selected the same partition as i know the drive name of my 1st HDD as 1 st priority HDD of 500GB, so installed on same drive on D:[ before this drive letter as C:], continued the installation, nothing formatted the drive, just overwrited."
Or, to rephrase...
...selected the SP2 partition.... so installed SP3 on same drive [drive C:], continued the installation, did not format the drive, just overwrote.
And therein lies your problem. Setup will NOT overwrite files, except boot.ini and the boot files.
It saw your old Windows SP2 installation, saw that it was built to be on drive C:, and then built the new SP3 installation for drive D: so as not to confuse itself. SP2 is not SP3. Setup takes no notice of existing drive letters - it will always reallot them to suit what it finds, or what you set in Winnt.sif. You later can change them all, except the one which Windows occupies [that drive letter is so embedded in the new registry as to be unchangeable].
What to do? Format that 1st partition on your 500GB drive, then install SP3 onto it. Setup will call it C: this time around, and allot drive letters according to a system - boot disk first, then next disk in the Sata mb number heirachy. They will be as you had them before.
If there are files on D; [old C:] that you wish to retain, copy them to another drive [partition] before you format D:.