Can you change drive leter in xp

[Randy]

my problem. I working on laptop and somehow the system part of the drive got into the c drive and so when i try to format it it won't let me because it say it might be damage but when i went to delete partition it says it contains system disk. Anyway i went and deleted the partition and and made 1 for c and 1 for d drive and I try to install os in the d drive and when i put to install on d drive it tries to format the c drive and not the d drive. and it wont format the c drive. I am trying to get the system part off that drive or change that drive letter so i cn have a C: drive to install window on. Any suggestions please

[mjc]

What are you using to partition/format the drive?

What are you using to install Windows? What 'flavor' of Windows?

If it is the 'system restore'/install disk provided by the manufacturer then you may not be able to do what you want...some of them don't provide true 'install' disks, but rather a compressed image of the hard drive as it was set up at the factory. By restoring that, you retrurn the machine to the factory fresh condition.

Others provide an 'install' disk that may be preconfigured with certain options to install things a certain way. If it actually gives you the Set up is checking bit at the beginning of the process then you probably have a real install disk, but you may need to select the 'custom' option in order to make any kind of changes from the default install.

Also, from what you have written, it appears that you want a single partition on your drive. To do that you will need to wipe out both the existing ones and start with a basically blank drive.

[Paul Komski]

By default Windows will always give the system partition the Drive Letter C: and the system partition is the partition marked as active on the hard drive chosen as the boot hard drive in the boot order if there are more than one hard drive in the system.

The boot partition is where the Windows folder resides and if this is different from the system (active) partition it will have a different drive letter.

You can try and make Widows user various letters by the way you format and partition prior to running setup but after installation the sytem and boot drives and any drives containing a page file should not (and usually cannot) be altered.

If you want Windows on a C: partition then install to a single partition drive (along the lines already indicated by mjc) and only add other partitions later.

In MS parlance the system partition is where booting takes place from and the boot partition is where booting continues to. They can of courese be one and the same partition.