i have instal win xp pro on my pc when i had 2 hdd on partition c: hdd1. When i remmoved the secondary hdd i had reinstal xp again on a different partition on primary hdd i get the following drive letters : c, e, f(my hdd has 3 partition). when i instaled 98 too from dos the letters c, d, e. i try reparing xp from 98 but no answer and i can instal xp from dos. So how can i change the letters whitout damaging the data(whithout formating the hdd). i ll apreciate any help! thanks!

What you wrote is confusing, so I may not be answering what you wanted. How many hard drives do you have, with how many partitions, what are they formated as and what OS is on each? And what OS can you currently boot to? Depending on what other drives you have (zip, CD-Rom, CD-writer, DVD), how you load and where you load an Operating System (OS) the drive letters can change. Specially with Win98. Win98 (DOS, 95 and ME for that matter) cannot see an NTFS drive and will follow the MS-DOS method of drive lettering. The Microsoft Knowledge base has articles on this, try Q51978.

i have 3 fat32 partition and 1 cd rw formated in dos. thanks any way for tring to help me.

How about this example: HDD 1 primary partition FAT - NT4 - boots as C: extended partition - 1st logical drive FAT32 -Win98 - boots as D: - 2nd logical drive FAT32 - W2k Pro - boots as E: - 3rd logical drive NTFS - W2k Server - boots as C: HDD 2 primary partition NTFS - XP Pro - boots as C: Most of the OSs on HDD1 were installed by booting from their install CD except W2k Server. W2k Pro was installed while I was in NT4, so W2k comes up on the E: drive as that was the drive letter originally asigned by NT4. Win98 installed as D: because during the install it read that another drive (the FAT drive) was the 1st primary. Win98 uses the old MS-DOS method of lettering the drives. This drive and the W2k Pro drive take up drive letters in NT4 but are not accessible as NT4 cannot read FAT32. To install XP I removed HDD1 and made HDD2 the only drive installed. So XP installed on the C: drive. Then I made it HDD2 and put HDD1 back in. It boots as the C drive. It shows up as the G: drive in NT and W2k. The XP drive doesn't show up at all in Win 98 (nor does the W2k Server drive) because Win 98 cannot read NTFS. W2k Server was a syspreped version that I had installed on a C: drive and ghosted. Inspite of it being located on the 4th partition, it thinks its load on a C: drive. NT, W2k and XP can change the lettering of any drive BUT the system and boot drive. My CD drive is X:. Hope this helped better.