HDD letter confusion...is it serious??

[AndyMil]

I have a windows XP pro sp3 machine (Asus 5Q PRO mobo) with 1 IDE HDD 250Gb and 2 SATA HDD connected to the DriveXpert RAID ports on the mobo. When installing W-XP I have called the IDE disk "Windows" and the array "DATA"
It worked fine, until I got a message that NTLDR was missing, so I fixed it using Windows Recovery, I copied the NTLDR and NT DETECT files from the CD. to the c:\windows drive. Now, when I start up, it says "boot.ini file incorrect, starting up using C: Windows" and it starts up just fine. When I tried to rebuild the boot file it would not do it (disk error) but chkdsk revealed no errors.


But the strange thing is that if I look at "my computer"or when I do a disk check or whatever, it says that the D drive is Windows and the C drive is data. I am not sure that this happened after the NTLDR problem, it was probably the first time that I noticed it.

So, in the boot sequence it refers to C:Windows and when I use the MAP command in Windows Recovery it states C:Windows and D:Data, but when I do a chkdsk or look at My Computer, is says: C:Data and D:Windows! 3 questions for the experts:

1-what's happening, how is this possible??
2-is it serious or can I leave it this way?
3-Do I need a boot.ini or can I leave it as is? (single-boot only)

Thanks beforehand for your insights



 

[BC_Programmer]

have you tried remapping drive letters using Disk management?


you should attempt to create a valid boot.ini manually... Can you list your current boot.ini contents (it is a hidden file, so make sure to enable that view).

[EQB]

As for if it's serious or not, no not really. Annoying maybe, but not serious. I reloaded an HP one time that had an integrated front-panel card reader and the Windows OS drive turned out as "H" because of it.

As far as I have researched one cannot change the drive letter of the system drive after the OS has been installed to it. I looked into the matter for the afore-mentioned HP, to no avail.

You can change the drive letter of your data ("C") drive though. If you know where disk management is in XP, then that's where you can do it. If you are unfamiliar with disk management, then just drop us a line and we'll direct you to it .

One thing you should be aware of is that most installers will pick the "C" drive (data in your case) as it's default install location. If you want to install most of your applications to your data drive ("C") anyway, then great! Leave it "C" and you will have a feature that most of us multi-drive users lack.

If you do not want to install most of your applications to your data drive, you can change the drive letter of your data drive "C" to any letter after "D" and installers should pick "D" (your system drive) as it's default install location.

Oh, one last thing. You should be aware that if you have installed any programs to "C" (your data drive), if you change the drive letter the programs installed on "C" will most likely break (because all the sudden they don't know where they are). So, before changing the drive letter of "C" un-install all programs from it and then re-install them after changing the letter.

[Geek-9pm]

Simple answer. Leave it alone and just use it. 
I have played with boot.ini and it was very educational, but if you can resist the urge to change it, then resist, resist, resist.

[AndyMil]

Thank you all for your replies. I really appreciate it.

@BC_Programmer: can't remap the system disk (d) so I will leave it.
There doesn't seem to be a boot.ini file (if I look at the dir of both disks via the recovery console, I can't find one) is that possible?

@EQB: thanks for your elaborate answer. I like the "feature" that my prog files are on the Data disk, so no problem there. My only worry is that I see a different situation when I look via Recovery (C:Windows, D:Data); are you saying this is normal after drives have been remapped? ie will you always see c:\windows in the recovery mode? I would think that a Windows view on the volumes should be equal to what you see in the recovery mode. By the way, I don't give a much about it as long as I don't run into big issues later on.

@Geek: your solution is very appealing and I will definitely change nothing, if the expert opinion is that there is no harm in it. BTW, is there a way to get rid of the "incorrect boot.ini" message without actually changing the file itself?

thanks again, guys (and girls???)

[killerb255]

If your computer boots up fine with the drive letters out of whack, leave it alone as everyone else says.

If there are problems, then you can change the letters around via registry:

1) BACK UP YOUR **** FIRST!  Avoid computer lobotomies and do this important step!

REGISTRY:
Select "Computer", click File -> Export.  Save that to a flash drive or other removable media. 

BOOT.INI:
Also back up your current boot.ini file. 

SYSTEM RESTORE:
...and just for ****s and giggles, create a System Restore point as well.

One last thing: restart your computer in some type of mode that allows you to access C:\Windows\System32\config easily (BartPE, WinPE 2.1, Ultimate Boot CD, DOS enviroment, recovery console, etc.).  Copy everything in C:\Windows\System32\config to your flash drive of *** saving as well.

2) Restart back in Windows and:
Start -> Run -> regedit -> click OK.

3) Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> System -> MountedDevices.

Your drive letters are the keys that are labeled "\DosDevices\C:', "\DosDevices\D:", etc.

4) To change the boot drive letter, you need to right-click "\DosDevices\D:", and left-click "Rename."  Change it to something unused for now (like "\DosDevices\Q:").

5) Now rename "\DosDevices\D:" to "\DosDevices\C:"

6) Now rename "\DosDevices\Q:" to "\DosDevices\D:"

7) Close the registry.

Check your boot.ini file.  It should look something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

If it looks like above, leave it alone.  If not, change it to this (this is why I asked you to back up your boot.ini). 

9) Restart your computer.  If that fixes the problem, great!  If not, then boot into the recovery environment you used in Step #1 (BartPE, WinPE 2.0, UBCD, Recovery Console, DOS, etc.) and restore your backup of C:\Windows\System32\Config as well as your copy of boot.ini, restart your computer, and deal with the drive letter madness.

[patio]

Simple answer. Leave it alone and just use it.

If your computer boots up fine with the drive letters out of whack, leave it alone as everyone else says.

I disagree.
You will find that wrongly designated drive assignments although seeming to be just a 'minor pain' will run like that for (insert anyone's guess here ) then all of a sudden one day you cannot access any of your drives and/or data...

Andy you need to locate the boot.ini file and post it here.
Instead of using the RC use Windows search instead...as suggested above make sure show hidden files and folders is set to on...

[AndyMil]

Thanks Patio and killerb for your responses.

@patio: I did a search (my computer, include system folders, subdirs, hidden files) on boot and boot.ini---> no files found. It does not seem to be there. Is there a way to create a new one?
@killerb: killerb, this sounds like a good solution. I think I will give it a try.

 thanks!

[Geek-9pm]

BOOT.INI is in the root of the "C" drive. But in your case we are not sure which is the real  "C" drive.  As for the recovery console, it is a separate thing. Some things that are "under the hood" in Windows can confuse anyone. The recovery console will put the MBR and NTLDR on the drive it calls "C" no matter what you think it shroud be. Also, at some point in time you may have changed the 'active' drive or partition in your system. There should be one. If two drives are active, the BIOS takes a pick of which one it likes. I am not making this up. I often use two drives and several partitions. Lots of fun. When you boot from the second drive, because the BIOS said so, it becomes the C drive in Windows. But if the first drive is the choice of the BIOS and there is not all the right stuff on the first partition, even if it is the active part ion, the NTLDR will find windows on the second partition if it is not on the first. Then Windows is on the D drive!  Is this confusing? I just got started. I love to dig into this stuff and after all is said, it does not really matter a whole lot as long as you make regular backups.Which you should do anyway.