How to restore the system/boot drive letter
Occasionally, if you make a change to the hardware/disk drive configuration, your drive letters may get changed so that the letter that was previously assigned to your system/boot drives (for example, c:) is no longer the same. These instructions assume your C: drive was changed to D: and tell you how to change it back to C: Before you begin, you should back up your data and the system state, and you must be logged on as an administrator. First you may need to change Permissions:
- Start Regedt32 and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMMountedDevices
- Click MountedDevices and then click the Security menu.
- Select Permissions.
- Give Administrators Full Control permissions.
- Close Regedt32.
Next you can rename the drives:
- Start Regedit (you cannot use Regedt32) and navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMMountedDevices
- Find the entry for the original drive letter (in this case, DosDevicesC:)
- Right click it and select Rename.
- Rename to a letter that’s not being used, such as DosDevicesZ:
- Now find the entry for the changed drive letter (in this case, DosDevicesD:)
- Right click it and select Rename.
- Rename it to the original (DosDevicesC:)
- Right click DosDevicesZ: and rename it to DosDevicesD:
- Close Regedit.
Finally, change the Permissions back:
- Follow Steps 1-3 in the first set of instructions.
- Set Administrators back to Read Only.
- Close Regedt32.
Note: you should use this procedure only if your drive letters were changed from the letter used when you installed XP. Don’t change the letter of the system/boot drive otherwise.
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Deb Shinder