Change letter on boot hard drive?

I just replaced a defective hard drive and reloaded OEM XP(SP3) on an HP Pavilion a1330n.

For some unexplained reason, the system assigned the boot drive the letter "I" and made one of the slots in the installed multi-card reader "C".

I went into to Disk Management, changed the SD card reader slot to letter "S" and then attempted to change the hard drive (only one HDD is installed, only one partition on it) over to "C". Since the disk was obviously in use, it would not allow me to change the letter.

This is a problem since the HP driver files automatically extract to the "C" drive and I cannot find any way to modify them to load an a drive letter "I".

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

Have you tried to change it in the Boot Order in the BIOS?

 

HDD is set to boot first; DVD second. Floppy and network boot options are disabled. Still no luck.

 

Usually, If a fresh install assigns a "bad" drive letter I would just do a fresh install. That media card reader could be disconnected from the motherboard and then you could reinstall to get a proper "C" drive. Then re-connect the card reader.

But since the card reader isn't a real partition then maybe you wouldn't have a problem just changing your I: drive to C:. I'm really not sure?

You could try Partition Wizard and use it to change the drive and it should prompt a reboot and change the letter before Windows is loaded. Or if that doesn't work you could use the PW bootable CD to change the letter.

I'm really not certain if changing the letter will effect how Windows runs given the current C: drive is just a card reader and not a real HD partition.

 

I think the fresh install is going to be my best bet (with the card reader USB disconnected).

I tried this TechNet fix (http://http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188#appliesto ) and all it did was cause XP to freeze at startup.

This is why I don't enter the COA code and activate Windows until I'm sure the install isn't corrupt.

 

Thanks for letting me know that kkb223188 didn't work.

I'm just not sure exactly what happened originally. I seem to remember a similar thread no long ago with the 5-in-1 card reader messing up drive letters but I don't think it was during install but it may have been. At any rate I don't remember the outcome.

I think a new install will be easiest. 45 minutes and you know where you are and don't have to worry about registry inconsistencies.