A weird thing with drive letters - Need advice please

Hi, can someone please explain me something. I installed XP on a primary partition, and after that Vista on a Logical Drive.
But now when i boot into XP, it shows that XP is on C: drive and Vista on D:
But when i boot into Vista, it shows me that it's Vista that's on C: and XP that's on D: Is that normal?

I'm asking this because when i bought this laptop, it had XP installed on it already. And when i received my Vista upgrade disk, i created another partition and installed Vista on it, but no matter what Windows i booted into, it always showed that XP was on C: and Vista on D:. That, however, is not the case this time. Can anyone explain me this phenomena and could it cause problems if i keep it like that?

 

Anyone????

 

You know that you can exchange the drive letters, right?

It seems that Vista automatically set itself as "C:" drive. It's not a malfunction or anything, but if you're annoyed, just reverse it either under XP or Vista.

Under XP. Go into Control Panels -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management.

You can change the drive letters from there.

 

C: will always be the drive letter Windows is running from.

 

Read my post above. It is not necessarily always the case.

 

You cannot change the drive letter of the active Windows drive.

 

Thanks. No, i am not annoyed......just wondering if this is normal or not, and whether it could cause problems when installing programs and so on.
Just made me think why it stayed the same when i first installed Vista, but now that i reinstalled both XP and Vista, it's different.

 

I believe this is the exact thing this quote from easyBCD documentation is saying:

Drive Letters

Windows uses letters to represent physical drives on your machine, making it a lot easier to understand what's happening where.

The problem with Windows' method of labeling the physical volumes and their respective partitions is that if you dual-boot, most of the time overlaps will occur. Right now it is all too likely that if you dual-boot you have different partition labels "facing" each operating system that don't seem to add up. To clarify (just an example):

Windows XP (installed on the first partition of the first drive) sees:
1. C:\ for the XP partition
2. D:\ for the Vista partition
3. E:\ for a common data partition shared between the two

Windows Vista (sitting on the first partition of the second drive) sees:
1. C:\ for the Vista partition
2. D:\ for the XP partition
3. E:\ for the data partition

So what's the right way to use drive letters in EasyBCD? It's quite simple, actually: Always use the drive letters that operating system you are currently booted into sees!

EasyBCD "translates" the letters that current OS sees into numbers for the drive and partition. So if you're in XP and EasyBCD asks for the Vista drive, tell it D:, because that's what XP thinks it is. Nevermind what Vista believes, it's the operating system you are currently in that matters.
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Drive+Letters+and+Numbers

 

And that just proves that WackyT was right in what he told you.

 

That is what I thought also, but does not explain that originaly XP always C: and Vista always D: unless that is mistaken? I would perfer the OS in use always being C:. I suspect in the bios you may be able to force them to always be one or the other if you perfer.

 

If this is normal, then i'm okay with that. But i think i already got the first taste of what it means when both operation systems think they are on C: drive. Namely, i installed Winamp in Vista(yes, made sure it installed into Vista Program Files and not in XP's), added a couple of skins and plugins in addition to that. But when i went to install Winamp in XP also, then after install was finished, all the plugins, skins and settings were exactly the same as in Vista......meaning that i didn't have to manually add them there as well. Could it be related to my "problem" somehow?
Don't remember the same happening in my first XP & Vista setup. Could it be that they are now sharing some of the info, or what?
Would love to hear from other Vista/XP dual-booters how their systems are set up.

 

WHAT????!!!!???? Are you SURE about this? How could installing something to the C: drive of one OS, magically appear on the C: drive of the other OS? Are these the ONLY two partitions you have? You need to go find out WHERE the skins were installed and then boot the other OS and see where it is finding the skins. This situation if it really is as you see spells DISASTER down the road. You do not want either OS to know about the other. That is one thing I like about "BootIT NG" it allows you to create your own boot menu and then hide particular partitions depend ending on the boot selection you make.

Gary

 

Yep, i'm absolutely sure. Haven't noticed the same thing happening to other programs i've installed in both partitions yet, just Winamp.
As soon as the program was installed and i ran it, it already had the same skin(not the default) and the same plugin open. Weird, i know.
And yes, i have no more partitions than these two.

This whole Vista also wanting to be on drive C: thing seems to be pretty common after doing a few searches in Google, but i don't understand why it didn't happen the first time i installed Vista, so i am wondering how many other people here are having the same thing.

 

Ok, i found something from Microsoft about this, but what i don't understand is where i can find that Unattend.xml file from:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB929848

CAUSE
This behavior occurs when the Unattend.xml file does not assign a drive letter to the installation partition. Then, the installation partition uses drive letter C. If another partition has been assigned drive letter C in the DiskConfiguration setting, that partition is assigned another drive letter.

RESOLUTION
To avoid this behavior, add the following fragment to the DiskConfiguration setting in the Unattend.xml file...............

 

Well, then maybe they're both installed on the same drive. Which is probably not a good thing, as you've found out. Or you chose to install Winamp to the same drive from both OS'es. Which is also not a good idea.
IF Vista and XP are installed on different partitions and they both call their partition C: (I doubt this, unless Vista's installer assigns drive letters differently than XP), then Winamp should be installed to C: on both XP and Vista.
IF Vista and XP are installed on different partitions and they both call the XP partition C:, and the Vista partition D:, then Winamp should be installed to C: on XP and D: on Vista.
In short, no matter the OS, install Winamp on on the same partition as the current OS.

Also, you know Vista's installer asks you where to install, right? You could just choose which partition to install it on... [wink]

But the thing is, Windows assigns the drive letters as it likes. They don't have to stay the same between different OS'es when dualbooting.

You can change most drive letters, but not the one Windows is running from.

Nah, not with XP, at least. XP's installer always assigns C: to the first partition on the first harddrive. If Windows doesn't get installed there, it won't be installed on C:. (I've got my XP installations on D: and E: respectively)

 

Perhaps XP is on partition 0 and Vista is on partition 1 (physical partitions on the disk - no letters here), and share My documents and some other folders (especially after an upgrade). I think I saw that once on a dualboot machine.

So some programs could put their settings files into one of those folders making the change actually visible in both Windows.

Hm. Not sure though.

That is true. I think that C: partition is automatically assigned by Windows to the first (primary) visible partition of the first harddisk, but not to the first physical partition on disk. Actually i read that on some systems BIOS settings can override default assignments and it is possible to have more hidden partitions before C:
At least I saw it that way a couple of times usually on Asus notebooks with recovery partitions. That is actually bad since there is a partition before your first partition c: where Windows reside. Many people deleted that partition and wanted the recovery space back, but unfortunately that made WIndows unusable.

BTW, in Vista first three volumes (partitions) are primary (C:, D:, E: by default - OS can reside on one of them), fourth and above are logical drives in an extended partition.

I still find it confusing though. They could make it easier somehow.

Ivan

 

Thanks for that. I have two partitions on my hard drive, whereas XP was installed on the Primary 0 partition, and when Vista asked me to which partition it wanted me to install it, i selected the Secondary 1 partition. So, i think i did everything right in that sense.
I installed Winamp first in Vista, and it installed on drive C: (the drive C: that Vista thought it was on and showed me). Went to check afterwards that it indeed was in Vista's Program Files, and it was.
A little bit later booted into XP and did the same thing there, but weirdly the skins and the one plugin were also already there. All the other programs i've installed in both Vista and XP, i also installed on drive C: Program Files in both OS'.

Could it perhaps be that when i installed Winamp in Vista, it installed itself in both OS' somehow, and when i booted into XP and also installed Winamp there, all i really did was over write the Winamp program?