Is C: sacred?

I wasn't paying attention when I was building a new system for my wife and myself about six months ago. There were flash card readers installed on the internal USB ports that took all of the lower drive assignments, so the single hard drive ended up as H:. I went with the "If it ain't broke" theory and left it as is. I've run into problems a handful of times. Most of my problems have related to programs that won't install on any drive other than C:. Again, its only been one or two shareware type programs. Once I had an auto-executing unzip package that would only unzip to C:. I stuck a flash card in the appropriate slot and it unzipped without any problem. So far I'm glad I didn't go through the hassle of reinstalling Windows, which I'm sure is the only way to change things.

The problem comes into play with the doing a HD upgrade as many folks want to do now in the digital storage age. They simply outgrow their old HDs. When you use the HD cloning software that comes with the drive, it clones it, but the system and Windows XP will likely make it be a new drive letter such as F:, especially if the drives are setup as Cable Select

Reinstalling is one option, assuming the drives are in the right 'order' with the CS. The other is to actually go into the Windows XP and change the drive letter of the mounted system drive. That way your new "f" drive is really the "c" and all the installed programs start working again. This is a registry hack only, because you normally cannot change the drive letter of the active system.

Here's a MSKB article which gives you the correct key information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

I had this happen to me once, I wrongly assumed it would assign C: to the “main” hard drive/partition, regardless of what the other Windows installation was doing.

At first I thought nothing of it, but it got frustrating after a while as programs were assuming that Windows was set up on C:. I ended up just reinstalling Windows.

Ah the joys of Windows and it’s ridiculous file system layout.

One of the problems is that some older programs or packages may need to be reinstalled because they rely on an absolute path ("C:\program files\...") to locate libraries or data files that they need. If those files are moved to drive F:, the programs will give you a "can't find..." error and refuse to boot up.

If this happened to me, I would try Registry Registar's registry editors to do a search and replace. I would search for X: and replace with C: . This should work, but haven't tried it.
http://www.resplendence.com/main

They have a free version too. Of course I would back up the reg with ERUNT first.
Packrat1947

To eliminate the situation completely.. Use only one drive connected to install your Windows, then put the other drive online after everything is working to your satisfaction. It will automatically become D or another letter depending on how many CD, DVD or USB drives are connected. As a bonus, the old drive may still be bootable and you can even change the boot drive settings in the BIOS and use the other original system.. in other words, the C letter will always be the boot drive!

Another tip for changing the drive letter: Search for Change of Address (COA2) from Ziff Davis, it appeared free in PC Magazine back in 2001. This ulility will change all incorrect drive letters in the registry with one click! This utility was made for the very purpose your article talks about.

So far after all these years I have never had that problem..........why?? because I am chicken and always follow what my father always taught me.....if it aint broke do not try to fix it. Yes, after reading the above article I would always follow the if it is not broken do not try to fix it and with me drive C is always the hard drive as in school that is what they taught us some forty years ago.

I agree completely with the Fortaleza Computer Doctor. I always have just the master drive installed when I install Windows. That forces Windows to install on the master drive which will have at least a C: drive on it. I always devote the entire master to the C: drive.

After Windows is installed, then I add the slave drive, which is where I keep my data.

One time I installed Windows when I had both the master and slave drives installed and Windows installed on the slave drive. I don’t know what it or I was thinking.

I never change drive letters. Windows is to unpredictable as it is.

When I first installed XP I upgraded from 2K Pro. Rather than reformat my system (I may not have liked it after all), I threw in an extra drive and installed to it instead.

XP got installed the letter I. 2K Pro had a letter of C. Eventually a third drive got placed in the system and assigned J.

The only problem I ever ran into, is that for some reason whenever I'd click on the shortcuts in a Save as dialog (on the Places Toolbar) it would default to my C drive. It took me a while to find shortcuts that had been saved on my windows 2k desktop.

Let me drop this comment into your minds. C is really sacred just as A and E are also sacred. By default C was made as the boot drive. Its permanantly wired in the CMOS chip and by default the A, C and E are there by default, thus are sacred.

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