Resolved Change the boot drive letter on an XP Repair install

After using some techniques to del INFCACHE.1 and regedit to get through an XP repair install, I noted that while in CMD (shift F10) mode the HD is always identified as D: rather than C:.

The system is now stopped in install on what I think is the failure to find a C: boot drive. Can a command level instruction be given to rename the HD drive letter?

This all began with clone job prematurely terminated and I've been trying to recover the HD since then.

 

Is this a clean install? It should of asked you where you wanted to install it at.

 

This is a repair install. I was attempting to recover from an interrupted Norton Ghost clone job and that's when the headaches began.

Are you saying that the clone job when the interrupted process occurred (as I recall, Ghost restarting as the old Lite On drive door was opening and closing too many times-- Only if you turn off Ghost loading can you save your data) marked the drive as D: and now that cannot be changed?

I will try to stay on this exact topic of drive letter change but it's part of a larger meltdown of Repair Install errors.

The other thing in play which I don't know is relevant is a BIOS upgrade after which these Repair Install errors cannot seem to get around. However I have booted both XP and Win 7 after the BIOS update and actively use this computer.

But the exact topic is this D: drive which appears to hang on the various reboots and so on.

Safe Mode is not an option since the initializing programs do not complete. For the same reason, I cannot use command mode.

 

IMO, you really need to start over. Otherwise you'll just continue to waste time trying to repair, build on and then continue to forever run on an old botched and shaky foundation.

 

My thoughts too Doc. Posted that in earlier Thread regarding ongoing problems the Thread starter has been trying to sort out. Neil.

http://superuser.com/questions/556951/how-can-i-change-the-drive-letter-of-the-windows-partition

 

There you go. Great minds think alike.

 

I spent yesterday using my remaining third redundancy backup to save somethings.

One of these I am just about ready to wipe and low level it and, as you say,
make a useable backup again.

I did find a Linux program that at least reveals the file structure but even there the prog (or my use of it) does not show individual names.

 

Listen to retiredlearner and SpywareDr start over. Do not bother with Linux. Good luck.

 

Marked resolved. Corrupted data made any read repair impossible.

I came back in here to say that the BIOS upgrade did not interfere with a fresh XP install which went smoothly.

I used HDD Guru low level tool to wipe the corrupted data then put on NTFS and XP both with the install cd to avoid any errors that an NTFS install from elsewhere might give.

 

Glad you got it resolved. Thanks for the update.

 

I can say that I changed the boot letter drive but only by wiping the disk.
Afterward, doing a scratch install of XP including letting XP build the NTFS file system and operating system allows the HD to boot.

To avoid any further problems I am rebuilding the HD by hand rather than cloning. This means reinstalling programs and transferring content manually.

I am also running the advanced chkdsk routine hoping to catch any bad sectors and will also run defrag, though on a scratch install I don't know what it might find.

Repeated errors at bootup suggested that the HD was hitting a bad spot over and over with slightly different errors at start in Safe Mode.

Also the HD was marked as 'caution' by Crystal disk info. I will get what content I can on it but not use it actively against the day it fails before I get some replacements.

 

I always use the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool which is Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic tool. Most of the manufacturers have their own diagnostic tools.

 

The Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) has most of the hard drive manufacturer's Hard Drive Diagnostics (plus much more). Note that if you aren't sure who made the hard drive in your computer, Seagate's Seatools will work with most any make of drive.

The following instructions may prove helpful for burning the UBCD .iso file to disc: How can I write (burn) ISO files to CD or DVD?