Changing drive letters?

[SHRED]

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I know how via "Disk Management" but XP won't let me.

2 HDDs. 1 SATA and 1 IDE.
I had win 2000 on an IDE HDD and I just installed win XP on the new HDD (finally).
When it boots I get the 33 second boot choice of 2000 or XP (I have lowered that to 3 seconds).

Problem is the new HDD and OS are drive letter: "D", the old is "C", and one is "system" and the other "boot" so the option of switching them is not there.
I get the pop-up message that you cannot change drive letters of either a system or a boot drive.

Is this even an issue?
Will it affect software installs?
Would a change affect current programs?
Should I just leave the new drive at "D"?

Also, how can I remove the OS choice window at boot-up?

Thanks again

[hobbit709]

1. Sounds like you have both OS's on the same drive

Unplug the IDE drive and see if the XP boots up. If you no longer want to use the 2000, make the IDE drive a slave drive.

[Duer 157099]

2. For modifying the boot...

2 options, one is to go through the System > Advanced > Startup & Recovery and modify the startup options there; or, just find the boot.ini in the boot directory (C:\ or D:\), open it with notepad and edit it (if there are more than one OS choice, you get the menu, otherwise it goes to the "default" option (you'll see this when you look at the boot.ini file)

Here's a good tip: get a floppy and format it from within XP (Start>Run>"format a:" - then go find the files "NTLDR" and "NTDETECT.com" (either in your root/boot directory, or the /i386 folder of your setup CD, and copy those to the floppy, along with a copy of your boot.ini file (I also modify the boot.ini to include several other options, in case I install an OS on a partition other than the primary one (but this gets complicated), and if you're using WinXPpro, you can also get the Recovery Console added as a startup option, but I digress... Anyway, rename the "NTLDR" file to "SetupLDR.BIN" (the copy on the floppy, that is). This is now a generic WinXP floppy boot disk, in case you start swapping drives and partitions around and somehow wind up with an unbootable system.

If you're comfortable with modifying the registry... ... what I've been doing when I have this drive letter issue is to go to the HKLM/System/MountedDevices key (which keeps track of all the attached devices, past and present, which is how it knows which drive letter to assign where) and (proceed with caution! I get myself into trouble but usually know how to get out of it, so... grain of salt...) I delete the whole "MountedDevices" key and then just add a new (empty) key called MountedDevices back to the same place -- it repopulates when you reboot, and it will reassign drive letters to everything, and will assign the "C:" designation to your boot drive (or rather, the first partition of the boot disk)

Other alternative is to use "Environment Variables" (in same area where the Startup & Recovery options are (System/Advanced) and change that -- but that has pitfalls.

I know this is sort of vague, so if it's not clear and you need more info before trying anything, post again.