Resolved Any reason to stick with default partition letters?

On my new laptop, my documents partition was assigned the letter F. Apart from one issue, it really doesn't matter to me. I do have a folder with shortcuts to a variety of graphics. On my old laptop, my document partition was D. So all these shortcuts now point to a file location that doesn't exist (such as D:://whatevername.jpg).

It would probably be easier for me to go into the Windows partition manager and simply change the partition letters around, than to go in and manually edit the target for each of those shortcuts.

Is there any reason why I should stick to the default partition labels? Something that might come back to bite me in a year or two?

 

Not AFAIK. Just don't change your C: drive. Everything else can be changed.

 

When you install programs to a partition, the install location (including the drive letter) is registered (written to) the Registry. For large applications like Windows itself, Office, your primary antimalware solution, there typically are several files that are loaded when the application launches, all called up from locations set in the Registry.

If you change the drive letters, next time you try to launch that program, not only will your shortcut point to the wrong drive, but application files that call up other application files based on information in the Registry will fail because they cannot find the necessary files where they've been told to look.

In some cases, if given the option, you can run repair or change from the Programs and Features Control Panel applet. If there is no repair or change option, you will have to reinstall the program to reset the Registry.

So if you have installed a bunch of programs, they can be changed, but it can be a pain too.