Windows 10 Changing Windows system/installation label to C:

[MvdL79]

Hi guys,

I am in dire need of some help/advice.

My parents are on vacation and I thought I would finally upgrade my mother's PC. This PC was still running on Windows XP along with several old programs. Normally I would do a clean install, however she wanted to keep everything *sigh*

So first I cloned the drive to a SSD and placed it into a newer PC. It was a miracle that the PC with the cloned SSD booted without BSOD's. I wasn't expecting this. I did have to reinstall most drivers.

Anyways, went from Windows XP > Vista > 7 and now I am going to install Windows 10.
(this way it was possible to keep her programs, settings, etc. but it took a lot of time)

So far all is going well, for one small/minor issue. For some reason, on the old Windows XP installation. The Windows installation & program folders were located on J: partition. I think this had to do with a restore several years ago. Anyways, partition J: is being used as the main Windows partition.

Is it possible to rename it somehow to C: (like a normal Windows installation) and keep all program's she has installed working (including shortcuts)...?

Any advice/ideas on this? If this is not possible without problems, I will just leave it as J:, however I would prefer renaming it to C: instead.

In the meantime I will install Windows 10 and check back on this thread.

Thank you in advance.

Regards

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I really don' get why Windows does't automatically make Drive C:\ the boot drive.
Normally whatever drive you boot into becomes C, if you dual boot both drives show up as C:\ when you boot into them.

Have you looked at Disk Management to see if it will allow you to rename Drive J to Drive C?
You will have to change C:\ to some unused letter first.

I just checked and my computer seems to be willing to let me change my C:\ drive to anything I want.
I didn't do it, so I don't know what would happen if I did but I assume it wold just show a new drive letter but still boot the same.

Just right click on the drive in Disk Management and select, "Change Drive Letter and Paths".

This doesn't involve moving anything just changing the name of the drive, and will move the paths to the new location. I'm not sure this would't cause boot issues!!!

But my personal experience has been that I can shuffle the letters around any way I want and it still knows where everything is.

A screen shot of your Disk Management Windows would be he helpful.

If you have a empty C:\ drive maybe you should just do a clean install of Windows 10 on it and start over.

Just be sure that all of the data on the computer is backed up before you start messing around with it.

if you have Windows 10 installed and authenticated you don't have to got through the whole updating thing again, once you have signed in with your Microsoft account you should be able to install it anytime and just log in with your account when it boot up.

Mike

 

[MvdL79]

It appears you have gone down the Rabbit hole with that install. You may never be able to get it to work, and if you do it may be so corrupted your mother will not be happy with it.

So, three thoughts:

You should not need to go through Vista to get to Windows 7, XP should be upgradeable to Windows 7.

If you were to clone the drive to another drive on the same system, it may be forced to go back to a C: for a system drive. I have seen cloning operation change the drive letters because it cannot have two C: partitions (or J).

Changing system drive letters on an installed system may have repercussions such as the registry still having the old letters and also boot failures.

But the best, most logical way to go is to do as suggested and perform a clean install of Windows 10. If your mother needs old files they should be available on the old drive or the image. Trying to drag old programs and drivers into Windows 10 is not a good thing to do.

I couldn't upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7, I tried that already, that's why I did XP > Vista > 7 > 10.

Everything was working correctly, until I added the harddisk. After that it went nuts. It was a blank HDD. Before that the SSD (with Windows 10) was working properly. The only annoying thing (and most probably the problem) was that J: was the system disk (where Windows was located and program files) in a normal system this would be C: obviously. But as I mentioned above, this was caused by restore/backup from years ago and was never resolved.

Clean install is not an option. She still has her old Windows XP PC. And I doubt I will ever redo this again. Her old PC already has bad clusters / sectors, that's why I decided to clone everything onto a new PC along with updated Windows. Which worked, until I placed the harddisk in there (for extra space and storage).

I know drag & drop is not going to work. But her old PC contains old programs with serials, she bought, but don't exist anymore or aren't retrievable. That's why I went through the cloning process.

The only good side; is that her old Windows XP PC has a RAID 1 system. I didn't want to do this before, but is it possible to take out the 2nd drive from this system, replace it with a similar or bigger drive and use the removed disk in the new PC?
That way it would at least save me the cloning progress. Also will the normal disk be mirrored automatically onto the new harddisk in the RAID 1 system?

But still, the problem will be the same in the end. Everything up and running, install the HDD into the new system for extra storage (pics and backups) and it will go haywire again, just like now...

 

[MvdL79]

I can't get into Windows anymore, that's the problem. So I cannot take a screenshot, other than a black screen and mouse pointer. I also just noticed that hibernation is working when it's at black screen (push power button shortly and it will hibernate).

So dunno.

My best bet is still that, when I added the harddisk to this system, something got mixed up within Windows (most probably registry), because the SSD (with Windows holding on J: ) didn't play nice with the new harddisk and this is causing all the problems. Removing the harddisk afterwards doesn't help. I guess the damage has already been done.

//edit

Maybe I should mount the SSD in a different PC. That way I can load the registry remotely from that Windows installation, however I am a little scared for my own PC that way. Will give that a go during the weekend (if I can find the time). If I can load the registry remotely, I probably would be able to edit the value called "DosDevices" to something else (maybe J: ). Just guessing here though (and out of the box).

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi again.

I really think that you should just back everything up, and do a clean install of Windows 10 on the C:\ drive.

It only takes about an hour and if you mother doesn't have a zillion programs installed a few hours should have everything back to normal.

Link Removed

See Media Creation Tool.

If you need to get into the computer to back up the data make a Ubuntu disk, and boot to that.
Use it to copy everything to a external hard drive (or DVDs if she doesn't have a lot of stuff) and then start over.

Make sure you copy favorites and stuff like Address Books etc.

Get Ubuntu | Download | Ubuntu

Mike

 

[MvdL79]

Hi again.

I really think that you should just back everything up, and do a clean install of Windows 10 on the C:\ drive.

It only takes about an hour and if you mother doesn't have a zillion programs installed a few hours should have everything back to normal.

Link Removed

See Media Creation Tool.

If you need to get into the computer to back up the data make a Ubuntu disk, and boot to that.
Use it to copy everything to a external hard drive (or DVDs if she doesn't have a lot of stuff) and then start over.

Make sure you copy favorites and stuff like Address Books etc.

Get Ubuntu | Download | Ubuntu

Mike

Doing a clean install will result in loss of her programs and other things. That's why it's called a clean install. I cannot copy most her programs back, because they don't exist anymore or the serials for the programs aren't retrievable anymore. And copying stuff over from one PC to another won't work either, because all programs make registry settings. Which aren't copied over obviously when you copy files...

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Well it's not totally true that all the software won't run, but unfortunately you can't tell which ones will and which ones won't ahead of time.

For instance most games will run without being reinstalled again, especially online games, and Adobe Premiere and Illustrator will, but Adobe Photoshop and InDesign won't. When I replaced my beta install of Windows 10 with my final version on a new SSD much of my software would run without being reinstalled from it's old location but then again I don't install any of my software on drive C:\ do start with.

So you are saying that she doesn't have install media for the software anymore?

That's tough, because unlike Windows 7 which would reinstall Windows while keeping all your software connections (Repair Install) Windows 10 seems to have decided it want's you to replace everything when you do a refresh, only retaining Windows Apps and you data files.

I really don't know a way to get around this in Windows 10, copying the registry will probably just bring all of your problems along with it.

Mike

 

[MvdL79]

Hahahaha.

Good thing I don't listen to people (in this case). I got it back working. As I mentioned Windows messed up the assignements of mounteddevices.

I booted up Hiren's BootCD (on USB obviously). And I ran the Registry Editor which is located on it, so I could load the registry remotely. I changed all assignments from C: (SSD with Windows) to J: and D: to Z: (HDD storage, backups and pics).

Thank God I didn't do a clean install, like MANY of you said. Oh well, thank you for responding anyways.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Does is show Windows on your C:\ drive now?

 

[bochane]

Great ! !

 

[MvdL79]

Nah still showed J: but happy with it.

I think when adding the the new harddisk it made some registry changes, which caused Windows not to load.
If I remember correctly, it was showing in the registry several times C: (which is fine normally), but I changed those values to J: and voila. Windows works again.

Only thing I cannot get my head wrapped around now is the fact when I open Windows defrag, that it doesn't allow me to defrag (or in this case 'trim' ofcourse). It only shows the harddisk, but not the SSD.

This is not on my own PC, it does show the SSD and I can optimize (trim) it. But I will figure that out, but not today

 

[bochane]

SSD's should not be defragged!

A. file can be stored in one or more parts.

Hard disks are organized in platters (disks) and on a surface of a disk are tracks and tracks are divided in sectors. To get to the new piece of information, you first have to get the read/write heads on the correct track (seek time delay, in computer terms this takes a very long time) than you have to wait to the correct sector (rotational delay). All this means that if your file is scattered over several tracks you wait and wait and wait.

SSD's are solid state, they are like a very big memory, nothing rotates, no moving read/write heads. Hence there is neither a seek time delay nor rotational delay. No need for defragging.

But there is more. The number of writes to memory cells of a SSD is limited. There is special firmware build in to spread the writes over all memory cells of an SSD. So defragging will no not only result in no performance improvement, but may even limit the life time of an SSD.

That is why SSD's are not defragged.

Hope you understand my English.

Henk

 

[MvdL79]

Ehr... I think you didn't understand my question. I obviously know that defragging a SSD causes wear and is not needed.

I meant TRIMMING. This option should be available under Windows defrag. The option for SSD will show "Optimize" which will trim the SSD (not defrag it). See:

(or in this case 'trim' ofcourse)

So you really didn't need to explain everything about SSD's, lol. I am 36 and have over 20 years experience in PC hardware, configurations and Operating Systems.

On my own PC, I can optimize my SSD (or in other words; it's selectable to trim it). However on my mothers PC it will only show the harddisk.

 

[MvdL79]

Well apparently running a simple command, like: winsat formal
...fixed it. Now the SSD is showing up in the defrag list, so I can optimize the SSD from there.

 

[bochane]

Nice, than that is OK.
So you started when you were 15! I was about 20, but in my days we had to design our own OS, there were no apps, no internet, and we used papertape, magtape and programming was in assembler.

But that is all off topic, great that you were able to get that computer in the air again.
Henk

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Well I started about 20 years ago.

My first programs were Adobe Photoshop 2.5 and Aldis Pagemaker later to become Adobe Pagemaker.
My first game was Ultima 6.

But I was already 57 at the time, so I got a late start age wise.

I got Tomb Raider 1 the first week it came out and the rest is history, I've played every TR game multiple times and will keep doing so as long as I can.

I've been a gamer and game tester ever since.
My first beta testing was Asheron's Call, and I've tested almost every major MMO since.

My last one was The Elder Scrolls online and I don't see anything new that's ground breaking coming along in the near future.

Now that I'm retired, (for a long time) I have a lot of time to play games and mess around with my computer.

I've never been involved in computer repair or anything like that, only used them for years as a graphic designer.

What I know I just picked up along the way repairing my own mistakes and misadventures.

Mike

 

[bochane]

Now, that our friend MvdL (Dutch by the way?) has done a great job, maybe time for some off-topic nostalgia:

Well I started 1966 with a 2nd generation Ferranti FM1600 and some followers, impressive and huge machines. We knew the function of every transistor in it. Then an SPC12 and Varian project computers and our company computer became a PDP 11-60 and followers.

Internet started, a wonder, our lab was connected with a 100kB line, it needed 2 lines and a very complex modem.

Who still remembers the 'thick ethernet' cable through the building, with transceivers (with a needle to make the connection) for every computer .PC's were hardly useable these days.

Do you remember prof. Edsger Dijkstra (university of Austin) with his famous publication 'The goto statement considered harmful', and the algorithm used by your navigation device?
And Capt Grace Hopper 'Proud to be in the US Navy', she developed COBOL. She Always carried around some small little thread to explain a nano sec to everyone
Who can still remember the first adventure game? "You are in maze of twisty little passages all like", it was a wonder.

Later we used VAX computers.
The first Linux distributions, Slackware, you had to download 30-40 floppies, with took an afternoon, but your PC was suddenly fast, and useable like a SUN workstation. Great

I have seen it all; it is a wonderful time to live in.
I am 71 now and retired for years.
Henk