[Nuffyfluts]

My main hardrive is currently listed as E:\.
Using VB Pro3.3, I can easily rename it as C:\.... but it remains E:\ in Windows.

Is there an easy way to change my hardrive to C:\ in Windows?
Of what use is it to be able to change the drive letter in VB Pro3.3 if it doesn't change also in Windows?

As it stands my spare hardrive is running Windows 7 as C:\ drive.
My main hardrive runs Windows XP and is listed as E:\ drive.

[Grav!ty]

That bolded red type you used is really hard on the eye so I changed it to the default.

VistaBootPRO will edit the drive letters that the BCD (boot configuration data) store shows an OS entry has. It is not intended to change the drive letter that the operating system is installed on.

You can use Disk Management to do that (right click Computer>Manage>Disk Management and then right click the hard drive you want to change the drive letter of and you'll see the options available to you). Note however, that XP will very likely become unbootable if you change it's drive letter from anything other than the drive letter it was installed on.

You should find when you boot to XP that it is on drive C if that was the drive it was on when you originally installed XP. Vista and Windows 7 use "virtual drive lettering" and they will always see themselves as being installed on drive C and allocate a drive letter other than C to any other operating system that is installed on the same system...unless you install Vista or Windows 7 from within Windows XP or whatever other operating system you have installed. By within, I mean run setup by letting the Windows 7 DVD autorun inside Windows XP and then start installation from there. It will take on the same drive lettering as XP and will not see itself as being on C drive. Not the ideal situation in my opinion.

[mnemonicj]

I had a similar issue with setting up Windows XP on a friend's HP. For some reason XP decided that the 4 slots for removable media should be a the C, D, E, and F drives and automatically put the System drive as drive H. I noticed when I started installing a program and it defaulted to the C drive and displayed an error, because there was no media at the drive location. I disconnected the media card reader, formatted, and installed Windows all over again. Ugh!

[JabbaPapa]

The Windows NT and the Windows Vista/2k8/W7 pre-boot environments/kernels order hard drives and partitions according to different procedures, adding to which Vista/2k8/W7 will tend to give letter C: to the installation partition no matter what letter it may already have attached to it.

The differences between the two ordering methods can sometimes be subtle, and therefore hard to understand --- but if you absolutely require identical partitions lettering, this can be acheived by installing XP first and then running Vista/2k8/W7 setup from within Windows, by inserting the DVD into your computer while XP is still running.

One potential problem is that Windows NT (ie NT/2k/XP/2k3 and associates) can occasionally create the system partition as a logical partition placed before physical partitions on the same drive, which can cause various boot and multi-boot errors after Vista/2k8/W7 have been installed. This can be avoided by ensuring that Windows installations are placed onto physical partitions, and that any logical partitions are placed AFTER any physical ones on any multi-partitioned hard drive.