How to change the drive letters in Win Xp

How do I re-asign dirve letters in XP home edition, sp 2?

This question was answered on April 13, 2005. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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How to change a drive letter

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps: 1 Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group

2 Click Start, click Control Panel

3 Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane

4 Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths

5 Click Change

6 Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK

7 Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change

The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool

Troubleshooting

When you try to change an existing drive letter, you receive the following error message:

The volume volume_label drive_letter is currently in use.

If you continue, the new drive letter will be assigned; but you can still use the old drive letter to access the volume until you restart your computer The old drive letter will not be available for assignment until you restart

Warning: Changing the drive letter of a volume could cause programs to no longer run

This error message may appear if there are files that are in use on the drive, on the partition, or on the volume These files may be in use by you or by other people on the network

To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:

• Click No when you receive the error message Quit all the programs that are using the files on the volume, and then change the drive letter To do this, right-click the volume, click Change Drive Letter and Paths, and then click Change

• Click Yes to continue with the drive letter change

About the author

Posted by Ronald of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on April 13, 2005

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