Drive ID swap

jgb · 3 Aug 2011, 19:02

Background: (as posted on WINDOWS BBS in general, specific to SU here)
I was installing a new powersupply on my old PC running XP-Home.
Somehow I killed the CPU.
My brother-in-law has an old/unused PC (but newer) also running XP-Home. Both have IDE drives. He gave me his PC. I swapped in my IDE drive as a slave. It came up OK, but the Drive ID's are all shifted up.

My drive will not bootup his PC as the M/B's are different.

He has only a large partition. I have 4 partitions.
My became D:, became E:, E: became J: and F: became K:

So none of my installed s/w will come up properly, as the drive ID's are all different. All of my executables are on my (now ) with various data files on (now E: ) and F: (now K: ).

A few apps came up in virgin condition, and even though I tried to redirect them to the proper drives, most of their configuration files could not be found or redirected, especially Firefox and Thunderbird. So I cannot get into my mail. (and I cannot remember my passwords, natch.)

I do NOT want to re-install the s/w, that is a near impossible task.

Is there any way to redefine the drives back to their original ID's?
How will this affect my brother-in-laws old drive and it's boot sector?

I will check back here every few hours as I cannot get an email notification.

Re: Sketchup.
SU8 is on my drive (now ) and all files are on (now E: )

I can reset the drawing file locations in preferences without problem, except for a few, but SU still will not come up with my toolbars and sub-windows (ie Layers, Entity Info) in position.

Is there an easy way to get back my familiar SU?

EarthMover · 3 Aug 2011, 19:22

Not sure how to restore all drive letters specifically, but here is how to change them if you know what they were -

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps:

Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.
Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.
Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.
Click Change.
Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.
Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

jgb · 3 Aug 2011, 20:20

Thank you EarthMover

My main concern is there are 2 "C:" drives to contend with, the boot on my B-in-L's system and on my HD which is now the drive. This is where all my executables are, and I am concerned about what will happen if I attempt to merge their drive ID's.

I was also directed to the following http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824125

This explains how to replace a motherboard (which in effect is what I am doing) and retain the existing HD settup but updates the boot sector for the new MB. I will make my HD prime and replace his HD.

I am going to try it tomorrow.

mac1 · 4 Aug 2011, 04:07

jgb
Why are doing what you are doing?
If you B gave you the PC why not give him back his drive or at least install yours just like you were using on the fried PC.
It has been awhile since I switch drives so would have to re-read but I think as a min you need to make your old drive the primary drive, this means changing the jumpers on the drive, if you switched them before.
I have my system set up to dual boot. Is that what you are trying to do and if so why?. Usually that is done for differnt operating systems. I would try and get back to an operating baseline so remove your brothers drive and just install your old one and then worry other changes you want to make later.
BTW have you looked at the BIOS to see if changes are required there??
You may run into the Microsoft Software control policy since you will be booting form a differnt machine ID. A search of the MS KB's is in order to understand that??

jgb · 4 Aug 2011, 17:10

The "new" PC will not boot with my HD. Tried it.

And, yes, I will need to tweak the bios.

The only way to get up on my HD is to boot the PC with my WIN-XP disk and it will start the "repair" process. Then my HD is the master and I can return my B-in-Law his HD.

And I am seriously considering installing a 1TB SATA drive as primary, bring it up as a new install, then mirror my HD over to it. My main concern there is the registry.

Right now I have a minor issue to get info on, regarding the different video cards which cannot be swapped.

mac1 · 5 Aug 2011, 00:33

The last go I had was a swap of a 300GB to a 600GB. I used Acronis True Image to make an image of my disk then did the swap and could tell no difference. You may want to consider something like that. For your other drives and the files the root directory of the file allocation table is part of the disk itself so you should not have problems with the files there if you use your old disk and just reload c with XP. If I remember correctly Win XP will only go to 35Gb so you will have lots of virtual partitions for you larger drive??
Here is a link to a grahics card survey summary done by Goolge https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg&hl=en#gid=1 which way be of use in selection of a graphics card. I think Nvida has a good rep with the Su users
I am still worried so about MS's DRM raising its ugly head when you try the XP on a new machine with a differnt ID. Have you done that yet??
Good Luck

jgb · 5 Aug 2011, 15:03

I have Microsoft documentation on replacing the motherboard and re-installing XP.

So far I have done a few conversion things, such as: getting my wireless router back up with a new host MAC addr; Redefining the default printer (temporary) and reading my mail on Yahoo rather than Thunderbird.

I am waiting for an answer from NVIDIA regarding how this affects the display drivers, where my HD has an ATI driver and the PC has an NVIDIA card installed.