please bare with me. I partitioned a 17 gb drive one partition is 12gb (C DRIVE) the other is 5 gb (D DRIVE) Forst I installed WIN98 on the smaller drive (of course the boot files reside on the C drive. I then installed WIN 2000 on the C DRIVE..everyhting worked great until I started adding my other drives back in. (one 30gb hard drive I use for storage, a 6gb drive I use for temp files and a cdrom drive.) Now when I boot my D DRIVE has been relegated to my e or F drive , obviousely this won't work because my Windows files are expected to be on D:\windows. My question is..is there a way during boot up to lock those drive letters in place? I know that once you are in WIN 2000 you can manage drive letters, but then it's too late... HELP PLEASE ---------------------- I did get some more info from a very nice man..he said I probably installed WIN 98 on a logical partition and that the other drivews had primary partitions..he is right..he said he thought this coiuld be fixed in config.sys.....any ideas out there? exact from bios Primary Master 17gb (2 partitiions) Primary Slave 30gb Secondary Master CDROM Secmdary Slave 6gb Sheila

Hi Sheila: You're not the first to get into this situation... With multiple hard-drives) becoming more common, and folks adding CD/DVDROM etc. after installing assorted OSs... all sorts of "not so " little issues can crop up. To understand what happend in your situation you need to understand how M$ OS (i.e. dos based OS) assign drive letters... Briefly: if dos'/9x(ME) is present, when the system boots up primary partitions are assigned letter first in order of physical hard drive; then Extended partitions/logical-drives are assigned. Thus the Primary on Master drive is given c: ; then the Slave (second) drive get d: and so... Once all Primary partitions are assigned letters the sequence continues again with the Master/first drive; Extended partition/logical-drives are assigned letters, then onto the Slave/second drive - and so on... This M$ KB details it more fully: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q51/9/78.ASP? So possibly you can see how your situation developed... If you had installed '98 on c: (and W2K on d: ) then this situation would not have arisen. Even though the partition for W2K might well have changed drive letters when viewed via '98, W2K would still have booted OK (and retained d: as its letter). W2K (and all NT family OS) stores drive letter info in the registry, and this is consulted/used during boot-up. How to fix your situation? There are utils "out there" that allow you to adjust/correct drive letter assignments; I think there is one in PM (and possibly System Commander too). The other way - and you may not be too keen on it... Leave all drives installed as is and re-install '98 (standard install method) to its present location. Overwriting (installing it again over) the current version is one way; the other is to delete the current '98 installation and then re-install afresh to that same location. Afterwards you run W2K setup/repair and allow it check system-files; this M$ KB details it for windows ME - but it applies equally to '98: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;293401 Note: whilst it's normally wise to make an ERD for W2K - before you start the above, it's not essential for the repair sequence (in fact it may better not to use it on this occasion). '98 will assume the drive letter appropriate for the current drive installations; i.e. it takes it acount the presence of three hard-drvies and assorted CD/DVD. However even if you go one of the above routes, if you remove "any" drive afterwards the drive letter for '98 will change again, and you have the same problem again... To avoid this and resolve the problem "completely" you would have to start afresh with the dual-boot; i.e. Reconfigure the drive to have the Primary partition set aside for '98 and install W2K into the first logical-drive on the Master drive. Thus c: will always be c: and '98 drive letter will remain unchaned. W2K will be d: (if it's installed with only the Master drive installed). When the other drives are added in and viewed under dos/'9x(ME) d: will become other than d: (what it becomes will depend on how many drives are added/present), but W2K will still boot using the same drive letter it used when installed (as explained above). If you have all drives present when you re-install W2K (with '98 in c: ) then W2K will assume whatever letter it has under the dos/'9x convention. Removing any drive will change the W2K drive letter (as viewed under dos/'9x) but W2K will still boot using the letter it had a time of W2K installation. The only drawback to this arrangment is that if you decide to remove '98 you will have a large Primary partition that will have only the W2K boot/start-up files left... It can be used for data, or you could use PM/SC etc to reduce it significantly and merge the balance (free space) in to the W2K logical-drive... And there are other variations/possiblities re' using that Primary space if '98 removed (in the future). Using an add-in boot-utils (via a fresh start) might also be another solution; but if you start afresh there is no need of any add-in utils. Personally I discourage the use of add-in boot-utils - unless absolutely necesary. Occasionally they can cause more problems than they resolve? The less you have between an OS and the drives the better? In the past when setting up dual/multi-boots, and a single hard-drive present (and likely to remain so), one configuration I used to advocate was to have a smallish fat16 dos Primary for boot/startup files only; each OS went into a logical-drive in the Extended partition; or variations on that theme. But when dual/multiple drives began to become popular... and folks began adding something new (a hard-drive or an extra CD/DVD) then the logical-drive letters would change (as you have found) and problems popped up. What was once a safe way to go is not necessarily the way to go anymore... Thus dos/'9x OS in the active Primary becomes a viable way to go (the primary thus becomes a significant size); additional OS in the Extended areas...

Take other drives out. Follow the following steps and then put the drives back in. It should now be ok. Double-click on the System icon in Control Panel, and click on the Device Manager tab. Find the hard drive with windows 98 on it, and select it. Click Properties, and then click the Settings tab. In the section entitled Reserved drive letters, choose the same letter (D:)for both the Start drive letter and End drive letter.

"Glynn": That's an interesting approach; not come across it before... Perhaps you can elaborate/explain it further, and "whence it cameth" - (please)?