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Hi,

I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
the boot drive is E: instead of C:.

I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
which is where windows is installed.

How do I fix this.

thanks,
Dan

"Dan Pelton" <dnp@ams.org> wrote in message
news:1QbCb.1501$hf1.628@lakeread06...
> Hi,
>
> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
> They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
> the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
>
> I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
> which is where windows is installed.

I ran into the same problem. Don't worry about it, fixing it now is just
asking for your head handed to you on a platter, and the Windows software
should correctly apply onto the drive of your own choice with the E:
partition as the boot partition.

"Dan Pelton" <dnp@ams.org> wrote in message
news:1QbCb.1501$hf1.628@lakeread06...
> Hi,
>

Actually it is probably too late to fix this problem.
unless you really want to repair this, when there is actually no problem.


It *may* have happenned because you made a lot of FAT/NTFS partitions, and
then changed them to be linux ? Actually XP doesnt look at the filesystem
type in the partition table when assigned drive letter,

And the ext2/3, swap filesystem (dont know about reiserfs, but xfs is
excluded) dont use or write over the first few sectors of the partition
(because they reserve this for the boot sector !),
and so the fat/ntfs superblock/signature is left there.

So a way to fix this might be to install grub to the linux partitions,
including / , /boot and swapspace
And then install it back to the MBR (/dev/hda) if thats where it lives
normally. grub will have wiped over the superblock.


I think this should be considered a bug in XP actually.

> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.

> The problem is that in windows the boot drive is E: instead of C:.


ah, well that is not a problem, leave it alone, it wont hurt.

Hi,

Please use the Disk-Administrator Utility to map partitions with drive
letters of your choice.
You must of course be the Administrator to do this.

Regards,
Aravindh K

Dan Pelton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
> They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
> the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
>
> I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
> which is where windows is installed.
>
> How do I fix this.
>
> thanks,
> Dan
>
First of all, there is no need to "fix" it. If you do "fix" it you may
actually cause problems. I have never changed the drive letter on a
boot partition on XP so I do not know what will happen but I do know
that there are things that referance the boot drive letter in the
registry that are created at install time.

Win XP like all MS OSs asign drive letters to the partitions that it
finds durring the boot process, primary partitions first and then
partitions in extended partitions. So I would assume that your XP boot
partition is the third partition that XP finds. This default behaviour
can be overridden using the Disk Managment utility but the only time I
would change a drive letter is before the drive is ever used.

Charles LaCour <clacour@lacour.homelinux.com> writes:

]Dan Pelton wrote:
]> Hi,
]>
]> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
]> They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
]> the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
]>
]> I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
]> which is where windows is installed.

MS labels partitions by first labeling all primary partitions, starting
with the first (80) disk and going up to each higher disk. It then
labels secondary partition, again starting on the first disk and going
up. It will label the partition as long as it recognizes the partition
format type. Thus and ext2 partition is not counted.

This is neither a problem nor a bug but the way NT (NT4, 2K=NT5.0,
XP=NT5.1) works in allowing you to boot NT from any drive partition.
For example, I have 2 drives with 3 partitions (eventually 4 when I get
around to cleaning up room for Linux - or I may just pitch Win98):
C: HD0 partition 1, primary boot, Win98 (FAT32)
D: HD1 - data/audio-video/games (FAT32)
E: DVDROM
F: CDRW
G: HD0 partition 2. Win2k (NTFS)

Win98 can't travel about the partitions but NT can. When I boot to Win98
I get the usual c, d, e, f but no G:. Ths keeps drive maping in the
proper order when I flip back and forth (not uualy since most Win98
stuff will run under 2K).


Dan Pelton wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
> They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
> the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
>
> I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
> which is where windows is installed.
>
> How do I fix this.
>
> thanks,
> Dan
>

Dan Pelton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
> They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
> the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
>
> I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
> which is where windows is installed.

Assuming you didn't install the system partition on
a FAT filesystem the 2nd is the Windows partition.
Look in the boot.ini file, after booting up AP
wll probably be easiest, and look at the ARC path.
If you don't understand that go out to the
MS web-site and search for either boot.ini or
ARC Path.

> How do I fix this.

You don't have to.

jmh

Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> "Dan Pelton" <dnp@ams.org> wrote in message
> news:1QbCb.1501$hf1.628@lakeread06...
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I have a dell laptop 5150. I installed Redhat 9 and Windows XP.
>>They both boot fine using grub. The problem is that in windows
>>the boot drive is E: instead of C:.
>>
>>I have 4 partitions. The 1st is /boot and the 2nd is NTFS,
>>which is where windows is installed.
>
>
> I ran into the same problem. Don't worry about it, fixing it now is just
> asking for your head handed to you on a platter, and the Windows software
> should correctly apply onto the drive of your own choice with the E:
> partition as the boot partition.
>
>

PowerQuest PartitionMagic can fix all those issues for you on disk
labelling - it'll get the drive letter fixed and will correct all the
references too! I just love that utility but it has issues with resizing
NTFS partitions, at times.

-Mr.I-recommend-Partition-Magic