I have a system with a W2K system installed on C: (system boot) with D: (programs & data) and E: (swap) partitions. I have setup a dual boot system with a second W2K on a new hard disk with drive letter L: which I now want to update to XP. However, when I get to the partition selection of the XP setup, the L: drive is bumped up to D: and the D: and E: are moved down to E: and F: If I was to proceed, I fear the system installed on C: wont find programs previously on D:, since that drive would then be named E: Reinstalling the system or software on drive C: after XP setup is not an option since it runs a rather special proprietary commercial software package and would involve high and unnecessary costs. Is there any way to make XP setup avoid relabelling drives on setup?

Forget about drive letter, concentrate on partitions. Drive letters are allocated by Windows at boot time, they are transient. As you are booting from the setup CD it allocates drives letters slightly different than the operating system will. When you boot the operating system proper the drive letters should revert back to what they were. Stuart

Thanks for the reply. I will go ahead and try the XP setup tomorrow.