Member Avatar for haneyedw

After using Dban on a hard drive I reinstalled a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro every thing went fine and works great except it made all the slot drives cdef dvd G and the hardrive H I changed the slot C to I and tried to re assign letter C to the hard drive but Windows XP will not allow it to be changed What happened and how can I re assign the letter C: to the System Hard drive ? Thank you for any help <Snip>

Edited by crunchie because: Snipped email address
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Short answer: this is almost always an installation-order / mount-order problem — an internal multi‑slot card reader or another storage device presented itself to XP during setup and took the early drive letters, so the Windows partition ended up as H:. As suggested, removing the extra removable/USB/internal card‑reader hardware before reinstalling is the simplest fix; the letter mappings are persisted in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, which is why the assignment “sticks.” (forums.tomshardware.com)

Safest, practical fix (recommended)

  1. Full backup of everything on the machine.
  2. Power off and physically disconnect any card readers, USB drives, extra internal disks (leave only the target drive and your CD/DVD or USB installer). If you cannot physically detach an onboard reader, disable its controller in BIOS/UEFI if available.
  3. Do a clean Windows XP install so the installer sees only the target disk — it will normally become C:. After install reconnect devices and use Disk Management to adjust non‑system drive letters if desired. (Disk Management will not let you change the system/boot letter while Windows is running.) (ftp.zx.net.nz)

Advanced / recovery option (for experienced users)
You can swap letters by editing the offline SYSTEM hive (risky — backup first). Steps in brief:

  1. Boot another Windows instance or WinPE, run regedit.
  2. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → File → Load Hive and open X:\Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM from the affected disk; give it a temp name.
  3. Go to <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\<temp>\MountedDevices</code> and rename the \DosDevices entries to swap letters (e.g. C: → Z:, H: → C:, Z: → H:).
  4. Unload hive and reboot. Follow Microsoft’s KB steps and warnings — incorrect edits can leave Windows unbootable. (learn.microsoft.com)

If unsure, reinstalling with minimal hardware attached is the least risky route.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

Hi ,please do not post your email address ,
do slot drives mean ,a card reader ,if so shut off computer ,dissconnect card reaader from the motherboard [not that hard really .then see if xp will let you change drive letter ,winxp may even reasign letters by itself after a reboot ,]

Edited by caperjack because: n/a
Member Avatar for haneyedw

Sorry it was unintentional it was my first post you may delete my untire post

Member Avatar for crunchie

How does one unintentionally write something down? I always thought it took conscious effort.
Anyway, we are here to help, if you still want it?

Edited by crunchie because: n/a
Member Avatar for gerbil

"What happened and how can I re assign the letter C: to the System Hard drive ? "
Within any practical meaning of the term... you simply cannot. Setup has embedded the drive letter H: thoroughly into the registry, into many, many keys and values.
Reinstall with those "slot drives" empty, or disconnected.

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