{"id":178,"date":"2004-10-15T07:51:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-15T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kb.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb-articles\/windows-2000-xp-2003-is-assigning-the-wrong-drive-letter-to-a-partition\/"},"modified":"2021-09-07T15:29:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T22:29:47","slug":"windows-2000-xp-2003-is-assigning-the-wrong-drive-letter-to-a-partition","status":"publish","type":"lsvr_kba","link":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/kb-articles\/windows-2000-xp-2003-is-assigning-the-wrong-drive-letter-to-a-partition\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 is Assigning the Wrong Drive Letter to a Partition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 uses a combination of disk signatures and partition start locations to keep track of drive letter assignment.&nbsp; If the operating system finds a partition that matches this information, it will assign that drive letter to the partition (regardless of the file system in use).&nbsp; Any additional&nbsp;partitions will then be assigned the next unused drive letter and added to its list.&nbsp; This can cause problems to arise in the following situations:<\/p>\r\n  <ul>\r\n    <li>A bootable Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 partition is duplicated and the original partition is in the MBR at the time the duplicated partition is booted.<br \/><br \/><\/li>\r\n    <li>A slide or move operation is performed on a bootable Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 partition and another partition is added or moved to start where the bootable Windows partition was originally located. <\/li>\r\n  <\/ul>\r\n  <p>In the event of a drive lettering problem, the drive mappings in Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 can be reset using either of the two following methods:<\/p>\r\n  <ol>\r\n    <li>By using Regedt32 (Windows 2000) or&nbsp;Regedit (Windows XP\/2003) to delete all of the&nbsp;values under the <strong>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE&#92;System&#92;MountedDevices<\/strong> registry key and then rebooting the system.&nbsp; (If you have multiple <strong>MountedDevices<\/strong> keys in the registry, edit the one that has &quot;&#92;??&#92;&quot; and &quot;&#92;DosDevices&#92;&quot; entries&nbsp;under it.)<br \/><br \/><\/font \/><\/li>\r\n    <li>By clearing the disk signature using BootIt BM, as follows: \r\n      <ol type=\"a\">\r\n        <li>Entering the &quot;Work with Partitions&quot; dialog. <\/li>\r\n        <li>Selecting&nbsp;the correct hard drive. <\/li>\r\n        <li>Clicking the &quot;View MBR&quot; button. <\/li>\r\n        <li>Clicking the &quot;Clear Sig&quot; button. <\/li>\r\n        <li>Clicking the &quot;Apply&quot; button. <\/li>\r\n      <\/ol>\r\n    <\/li>\r\n  <\/ol>\r\n  <p>Once the drive mappings are reset, Windows&nbsp;will reassign the drive lettering using the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/?p=180\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">standard procedure<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n  <p><strong>Note:<\/strong>&nbsp; When using BootIt BM, you should not encounter this problem unless Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 is installed in a directory other than &#92;WINDOWS&#92; or &#92;WINNT&#92;.<\/p><hr id=\"null\" \/>\r\n  <p>Please refer to the article&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/?p=179\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&quot;How to Prevent Boot Problems When Manipulating a Bootable Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 Partition&quot;<\/a> if you are planning to copy, slide, or move a Windows partition, from which you will later boot.&nbsp; The advice in that article can help prevent problems booting later on.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Windows 2000\/XP\/2003 uses a combination of disk signatures and partition start locations to keep track of drive letter assignment.&nbsp; If the operating system finds a partition that matches this information, it will assign that drive letter to the partition (regardless of the file system in use).&nbsp; Any additional&nbsp;partitions will then be assigned the next unused [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"lsvr_kba_cat":[1782],"lsvr_kba_tag":[2127,2147,2145,2146],"class_list":["post-178","lsvr_kba","type-lsvr_kba","status-publish","hentry","lsvr_kba_cat-nt-2k-xp-2003","lsvr_kba_tag-windows","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-2003","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-2k","lsvr_kba_tag-windows-xp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/lsvr_kba"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5913,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba\/178\/revisions\/5913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_cat?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"lsvr_kba_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terabyteunlimited.com\/kb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lsvr_kba_tag?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}