XP Pro re-install...

I have two hard driver on my desktop. HDD 0 (zero) is partitioned in to 4 equal partitions of about 37GB each and the partitions were designated as local drives C, D, E, and F. HDD 1 is partitioned into 2 equal partitions of about 15GB each and the partitions were designated as local drives H and I. All are NTFS. Local drive G is a CD drive.

I used a CD that I had thought I had slipstreamed SP3 on but after the install the update site told me I needed to install SP3. Oh well, not a problem as I happen to have SP3 on a separate CD from Microsoft.

I started by booting from the supposedly slipstreamed CD, did a new format of drive C and I didn't touch any of the remaining local drives (D, E, F on HDD 0 nor H or I on HDD 1).

When all was done XP Pro had shuffled the local drive designations as follows:
C -> C
H -> D
D -> E
E -> F
F -> G
I -> H
and the new designation for the CD drive is J.

Frankly, I wanted to keep the smaller HDD 1 with consecutive letter designations on the end of the list. It is an older drive that is used only for backups with Acronis. If I have to ever pull it then my drives get even more skewed up.

My question is what possessed windows to do this? I quit re-installing at that point and am considering doing the re-install over again. Any suggestions besides removing the cable from HDD 1 and adding it back later?

 

Right click My Computer icon, and select Manage. Go into Disk Management. You'll see your drives and partitions listed, and below that you see CD-ROM 0, right click on the partitions and CD drive you want changed and select 'Change Drive Letters and Paths'.
BTW, to do the CD Rom you choose the icon for it down below, although it doesn't look like it will do anything of the sort.

 

WOW. That was easy. Mark, thank you very much!!

 

Scout,

Just a quick suggestion... I always set my optical drives to X & Y, this keeps them out of Window's way. HTH

 

Great suggestions all around. Thanks to all!!