BIOS selects boot drive as first in the specified sequence (in BIOS setup) that has a device that indicates it has a bootable partition from that device it will load the boot program (mbr), which will (in current Windows Linux etc. - post DOS systems) load the OS selection facility from the 'Active' partition. Once that facility has determined which OS to load, it loads that from the specified device (as per the attachment path, or - for USB and other detachable devices - the selection id) and the indicated directory Beware - Windows can run the pagefile from one, or several partitions, and can have the registry and user profile (desktop etc) on another, so your logged-on environment can be spread over 4, or more partitions
note the difference between partitions and drives a drive can have several partitions - and even bootable CD's are setup that way The Windows OS booted from a hard drive usually assumes that you will only access 1 partition from a CD or DVD in a drive, so the Manage facility usually shows 1 letter for those drives. The OS will probably stop you changing the letter associated with the partitions used as part of the current logged in user control set - Active partition, OS partition, pagefile, and user profile. Be careful about changing partition letters for drives that contain software, or used as the source for installed software, sometimes that software will refer to the installed from location by device type, and sometimes it is poorly coded so it looks at the letter that was assigned when the software was installed ( see MS Office ) So - firstly C and E are partitions on those drives and the OS startup options probably reference those partitions by directory, connection path, and partition sequence number within the drive so - moving a drive from primary P-IDE cable master position to Secondary P-IDE connection master will need the boot option location changing from 0,0,0,0 to 0,0,1,0, and as a slave to 0,0,1,1 Don't worry too much about that if you are changing drive connections around, just make sure the boot.ini has appropriate entries Copy and modify as needed), and that the startup partition is still marked as Active Now - the letters .. Windows has a file where it records the letters associated with the partitions and drives, using the drive id codes and partition locations, so switching the connections around will not worry the OS, it simply finds the drives by their ID's and allocates letters as before deleting, or adding a partition will cause problems as the OS will be allocating letters by location, a new partition created before an old one (by splitting an existing partition can get the letters re-allocated, and confuse the OS Adding at the end, or adding new drives is not such a problem as the OS will allocate letters as it was previously set to do, then allocate spare letters to the new partitions. Fun aint it, but not quite as bad as before remembering the DOS/Win95 allocation was Primary partitions got allocated letters first, then the drives were re-scanned for non-primary partitions, with the scan stopping as soon as a partition was found that was formatted as any other type than FAT - move a drive and all the letters could change! JimB ----- Original Message ----- From: "chris adams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 10:33 PM Subject: drive letter assignment > greetings - i have a machine(win xp pro) that i'm trying to change the > letter assignments on, having no success. currently, 'c' is the serial > ata drive, 'd' is a cd-rom, 'e' is a zip drive, and 'f' is another > cd-rom. everything is jumpered to cable select, with both cd-roms on the > 1st ide channel, and the zip in the master position of the second ide > channel. i moved the zip to the slave position on the 1st ide channel, > and put the second cd-rom in the second ide cable, master position. > rebooted, and the zip drive was still 'e'. i went into control panel > and tried to locate a means to change letters, but could not find one. > possibly that was win 2000. it occurs to me that i may need the zip > software to change the lettewr assignments. help, please? > ---------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Is your picture included in the Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page? > http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html > If not, write to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ---------------------------------------- To Change your email Address for this list, send the following message: CHANGE WIN-HOME your_old_address your_new_address to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note carefully that both old and new addresses are required.
