Windows 7 Drive Mapping Windows XP with Windows 7

[greenarrow1]

I never noticed this until today when I went to add more space to the Windows 7 drive on my disk. Even though I had Windows XP and then installed Windows 7 my computer shows Windows 7 as Drive C and Windows XP as Drive D. I have no idea how this occurred since i presumed Windows 7 would auto be Drive D with Boot installed to Windows XP Drive C.

Now the problem is the actual cylinder boundaries show Windows XP as C and Windows 7 as D but not on the computer opening My Computer. This is something new to me so I have no idea how the computer or Windows 7 install managed to change the drive mapping. Since one cannot just go in and change drive letters does anyone know how to fix this so the drives are correct? Both partition managers I have show it correctly but the computer does not on Windows 7.

Reinstalling Windows 7 is a nightmare specially since you have to call to get a new activation and go through about a hour of hoops and loops.

 

[Basher]

Hi,

Sorry, I don't know the answer to your problem, but the reinstall issue is not right. My understanding is if you reinstall on the same PC it should activate OK and the phone activation has only taken 5 - 10 mins for myself.

Basher

 

[greenarrow1]

Drive Mapping and Windows 7

My problem last time was my motheboard went south 2 days after I installed W7 Pro so when I reinstalled it was considered another computer even though it had the exact same IP.

But that is not the actual problem it is the mapping of drives when one installs Windows 7 from Windows XP. I noticed quite a bit of problems when I do a search on this problem so it is not just a problem for me as others have twisted drive letters.

According to both Partition Manager and Diskeeper Drive C is actually Windows XP and Win 7 is Drive D but on "My Computer" it is showing Windows 7 as Drive C and XP as Drive D. According to search others are having this same problem with both XP and Vista upgrading to Win 7. This means the Win 7 install is not rendering correct Drive Mapping and this could create a major problem when one decides to get rid of XP or Vista or decides they do not want Win 7.

It took me a long time getting my forensic programs to work with Win 7 and I do not want to go through that again with a new install so I am looking for a proven way to get the drive letters corrected without crashing the system. Most computer forensic companies do not upgrade their softwares until the operating system is considered very well stable because of costs involved. I made a mistake only giving Win 7 80 gigs and I need to add space to it but I need to absolutely be sure the drives are correct before doing this. By all standards Win 7 should be drive D or Win7 moved all XP files when installing.

I never noticed this before I went to increase the size of Win 7 Drive because I made copies of everything I wanted on Win 7 to a couple of DVD's and installed them new or copied docs and data.

 

[greenarrow1]

Further update after fully checking each drive I notice that the bootmgr is on both drives and are exactly the same as far as I can tell. On XP it is not visible even with showing all hidden folders but it comes up if I do a search on drive D. The reason I feel that it is hidden is one cannot have 2 MBR's on the same computer active. Figure that one out LOL. Since Windows 7 Drive C is actually after Drive D physically on the drive and it contains the bootmgr I cannot add space to it.

In all my years using computers and it goes way to to Texas Instruments days and MSDOS I have never had a problem like I am with Windows 7. I guess I can move the MBR to XP and do a XP recovery and than a Win7 repair and really hope it does not destroy all my forensic programs on Win7.

The only thing is how do i prevent Win7 from redoing this exact thing when I do all this?

 

[Basher]

Hi Peter,

Windows 7 has taken a leaf out of Unix's boot manager - it now creates a partition that is reserved and hidden that it uses to boot the PC. If you use the windows 7 Computer Management, and storage tree you will see a 100mb System Reserved partition. I am of the understanding for dual boot that Win 7 should be the first OS to install and then any others because of the new boot manager partition. I think the fun you are having (scus the pun ) is due to this.

Hope this is of some sort of help,

Basher

 

[greenarrow1]

Hi Peter,

Windows 7 has taken a leaf out of Unix's boot manager - it now creates a partition that is reserved and hidden that it uses to boot the PC. If you use the windows 7 Computer Management, and storage tree you will see a 100mb System Reserved partition. I am of the understanding for dual boot that Win 7 should be the first OS to install and then any others because of the new boot manager partition. I think the fun you are having (scus the pun ) is due to this.

Hope this is of some sort of help,

Basher

On SUSE 11.2 you have to config the GRUB menu and it will dual boot Win7. It also could be due to Novell and Microsoft working together so SUSE Grub is changed compared to other Linux systems. I use SUSE because it contains a lot of programs I use without me having to search all over like with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is fine for a home user but not for technical users.

According to what I have found with the bootmgr on Win7 I should be able to just delete the XP partition and be able to boot into 7. Only problem is a lot of my programs will not work with 7 so the issue still is how do I increase the disk size for Win 7 since it contains the boot folder? I guess I could partition and move all system and the bootmgr to that and then increase the data size. Computer forensic companies are slow in upgrading their software for Windows mainly because a lot of techs use Linux programs and the instability of the Windows systems. A lot of companies are delaying upgrading to Win7 because of the costs and sorry I have to agree with them that Win7 is over priced. For the price of Win7 Ultimate I could build a high end computer.

MS really messed up as they really did not give current XP users a clean way of upgrading to Win7. Even with the EULA I noticed a lot hacked and did a clean install. What I am getting at is MS wants ev1 to go from XP to Win7 so they can get rid of XP but not providing clean help they are actually defeating their own cause. And, again 3d party companies still have not created drivers and updates for Win7. Not talking about what home users have but what companies do. In my forensic field I have noticed a lot of companies switching to Linux systems and desktops because of costs.

I chose the upgrade route because I still need XP and certain programs but never figured Win7 would hijack the boot. If I knew this at the beginning I would have gave the Win7 disk a 100gigs or more. Even reading the Win7 install configs on MS Tech Net it stated the bootmgr would be on XP since that is the original first install on the hard drive. Windows is not like Linux where you can config the boot mgr on the install.

 

[Tepid]

Well,, to explain the initial issue....

When you login to 7, 7 will be C: drive and XP will be D: or whatever was free at the time
When you login to XP, XP will be C: Drive and 7 will be whatever drive letter was free when assigned first.

This is normal and there is no need to mess with it.

Since one cannot just go in and change drive letters

Yes, you can, but you do not want to with System Drives.

Win7 would hijack the boot.

Win 7 is not XP and XP is not Win 7, they are different technologies underneath.
Win 7 is not hijacking the Boot Sector it is taking control of it because it must, in the windows world.
This can, however, cause problems when it comes to dual booting with others like Linux cause Linux wants to own the boot sector also. but, that is the way it is.

MS really messed up as they really did not give current XP users a clean way of upgrading to Win7.

No they did not. Because, mainly, XP is out of Main Stream Support.