Avoiding drive letter problems is one of the main things we have to consider when cloning and moving Windows and there are a few measures we can take before hand to prevent such issues from arising. For example we can hide partitions from Windows so that letter allocation won’t take place, or we can delete Window’s memory of previously allocated drive letters so the old associations don’t come into play. This is partly covered below, but is more fully explained in this article and so if the recovery procedures detailed on this page fail for you then perhaps a bit of prevention may help in any following attempts you have at moving Windows.

There are of course other boot issues to be overcome when moving a new-generation Windows operating system and knowing a bit about the new boot files is key to an understanding of those.

If you just can’t get Disk Management or Regedit to open for you in the steps detailed above, even in safemode, then try ‘Safemode with Command Prompt’. Note that from Win7 in safemode you have to tick the option ‘Create this task with administrative privileges’.

If you still can’t get Disk Management to open but regedit works then you can make an educated guess as to which DosDevice entry is your desired target and change its letter and try rebooting. If you don’t have success first time then repeat the process with each DosDevice entry until you get the right one. Another option you can try is to just delete entire lines in the MountedDevices key, which will force Windows to completely rebuild them on reboot.

You can in fact delete the entire contents of MountedDevices except the first line and this may well do the trick, as in the absence of any previous letter allocations it is normal procedure for Windows to make its own partition the C: drive. Clearing out the MountedDevices key is something that can be done in a fully functioning Windows install in order to try and cure certain letter allocation problems, or as a preemptive step before moving Windows so that letter allocation problems are avoided.

Please be acutely aware however that in normal circumstances changing or deleting items in the MountedDevices key should not be tackled lightly and it is only safe under certain conditions.

In our case here with an already non-booting operating system we have little to lose and we should still be able to recover things manually by changing each line individually till we get it right and give our partition the correct letter.

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When you move a Windows operating system, either by cloning partitions or drives, or even by just restoring a backup image, it can happen that on first bootup a Windows install will swap drive letters and assign itself a different letter to the one it originally had. This usually results in either a hang and failure to boot, or various error messages that you have to click through just to get to a changed and limited desktop, or you may even get cross-linked operating systems where you can be booted into a different Windows install to the one it appears you are.

The Problem. Making Corrections. Note that the amount of entries in MountedDevices can range from several to dozens and for our purposes here we are only interested in the lines that start Previous generation of Windows NT operating systems.

With XP or Win2K and their server derivatives we won’t make it to any kind of desktop but instead just be left hanging at one of the startup or welcome screens. To get easy access to the registry of an unbootable OS will require having to be able to boot into another Windows operating system from where we can use its regedit tool to make our drive letter alterations as described above.

Links that are also within the above article. Further Reading. Top of page WinDroid Dual-Boot Phones: Tablets that dual-boot have been withdrawn, will smartphones fare any better? Advertisement: www.

 
 

 

Windows 10 startup fails – drive letters changed – Microsoft Community

 

I was able to find the automatic repair logfile, srttrail. So my questions are why did the boot drive letter change as far as windows is concerned, and how do i fix this, preferably without wiping out the whole hard drive?

Was this reply helpful? Yes No. Sorry this didn’t help. Thanks for your feedback. So, the C: drive and X: drive are not pointing to the same thing. I tried doing a chkdsk on the Xm drive, and received a message saying it found bad on-disk uppercase table – using system table.

It came back and said it couldnt lock the current drive and that windows cannot run disk checking because this volume is protected. That was on X: drive. I changed to the C: drive and tried again but I got a message about the drive being in use and did i want to force a dismount of that volume. I did not want to do that since i wasnt sure what would happen. I ended up restoring the laprop back to factory settings which seems to have worked. Choose where you want to search below Search Search the Community.

Search the community and support articles Windows Windows 10 Search Community member. All partitions showed as healthy.

This thread is locked. You can follow the question or vote as helpful, but you cannot reply to this thread. Thus, you need to give the partitions a drive letter.

Or you just want to change the original drive letter to another one. The hard drive contains your operating system and boot files will be set as C: drive and all your software will be saved on it by default.

Don’t try to change it, or you cannot boot your computer. Sometimes, you may find that your computer skip one drive letter and assign another available drive letter for your card reader. Maybe, your card reader with one more slots, so it will have different drive letters. If you change the drive letter of a partition or disk with software, it may stop working.

You cannot find the path of it. Fortunately, this is not a common question with newer programs and apps. But if you have an old program or you still use the old operating system Windows XP or Windows Vista, this may be a potential problem. When you encounter partition or disk problems, Windows built-in tool, such as disk management, diskpart will your first choice. Step 1. Step 2. Right-click the drive you want to change, and select change Drive Letter and Paths in the pop-up window.

Notice: If you want to remove the drive letter of your partition, you can select ” Remove ” and follow the instructions step by step. Step 4. Select a drive letter from the drop-down list and click OK.

And you are only allowed to use a drive letter which is still available. You can change drive letter in disk management. However, it may not work well at any time. For example: when you connect a hard drive to another PC, the disk may not display its drive letter and you cannot add a drive letter to it using Disk Management. Right-click the partition, then select Advanced and Change Drive Letter on the main page.

Preview the final result and click Apply to execute the further operation. This article is also applied to change drive letter on Windows XP, external hard drive, card reader, etc.

 
 

Windows 10 boot drive letter changed free download

 
 

Don’t use the procedure that’s described in this article to change a drive on a computer where the drive letter hasn’t changed. If you do so, you may not be able to start your operating system. Follow the procedure that’s described in this article only to recover from a drive letter change, not to change an existing computer drive to something else.

Back up your registry keys before you make this change. This article describes how to change the system or boot drive letter. Usually it isn’t recommended, especially if the drive letter is the same as when Windows was installed. The only time that you may want to do so is when the drive letters get changed without any user intervention.

It may happen when you break a mirror volume or there’s a drive configuration change. This situation should be a rare occurrence, and you should change the drive letters back to match the initial installation.

To change or swap drive letters on volumes that can’t otherwise be changed using the Disk Management snap-in, use the following steps. In these steps, drive D refers to the wrong drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the new drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume.

This procedure swaps drive letters for drives C and D. This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully.

For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs.

For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, see How to back up and restore the registry in Windows. Verify that Administrators have full control. Change it back when you are finished with these steps. Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators.

It should probably be Read Only. Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. Skip to main content. Contents Exit focus mode. Applies to: Windows 10 – all editions, Windows Server R2 Original KB number: Summary Warning Don’t use the procedure that’s described in this article to change a drive on a computer where the drive letter hasn’t changed.

Note In these steps, drive D refers to the wrong drive letter assigned to a volume, and drive C refers to the new drive letter you want to change to, or to assign to the volume. Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key. Is this page helpful? Yes No. Any additional feedback? Skip Submit.