Program that changes drive letter D: to G: for example.

"mm" wrote in message
...

Program that changes drive letter D: to G: for example.

Five or ten years ago I had a freeware program that would scan the
harddisk and find every place where a drive letter of your choosing
was used, like C: or D:, display a list of them, and give you the
opportunity to change some or all of them to some other drive letter.

Does anyone remember the name of that program? Or part of the name.
Or the author's name?

It would look in the registry and all the .bat files and shortcuts and
some other places that didn't come to my mind years ago until I saw
the author had thought of them (and don't come to my mind today
either.)

It had a simple gui, nothing fancy, but did have white squares,
probably with scroll bars where the names of the files appeared each
with a check box probably.

I have a great need for something like this now.

My suggestion would be to 'google' for it.

H.


Thanks.

On Sun, 3 Oct 2010 12:10:50 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:



Then I found Drive Mapper as part of Partition Magic, but when I went
either to download it or buy it, they switched to Partition Wizard,
for 113 dollars no less. This is the second time I've found a 3rd
party webpage doing this sort of thing. And Easus had a page about
Partition Magic, didn't figure out why.

( I also don't know if even PM8 will be able to read the XP registry.
Do you think that woudl be a problem? If so, it's a shame Norton
bought it and stopped selling it, when it might have take only small
changes. I could put a phony entry in the registry, for a phony
partition, like M:\test\test, and then see if Drive Mapper finds it
and changes it. )

I've got Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed on this XP computer, and
have used it on occasion for some partition work, but nothing else. Not
sure what you meant by it's "ability or inability to read the registry",

23 hours after I posted, I couldn't figure out what I meant either.
Rafters's post explained it to me. I should have said "I also don't
know if Drive Mapper of PM8 will be able to read the XP registry,
because that is where most of the references to file names are
located.

per se (i.e., it's reading the drive, but using the registry, like any
program does), but it does work on Win XP, if that's what you meant, even
with this 250 GB drive, which has several partitions (but no one
partition
is anywhere near 160 GB here, though).

My biggest is 90 gigs and that holds file backups (not images) for 4
computers. Even if one saved a lot of video and audio, he should put
that in a data partition, which if done right likely won't have any
file names or drive letters anyhow. (Its files will have names, but
there won't *be* filenames inside the files.)

He seems to want a particular drive manager application (he can't remember
the program or the program author's name) that can change drive letter
assignment and all references to a particular drive in the registry *and
elsewhere* so that changing drive letters won't break *any*
functionality -
for Win98 and legacy programs (ini files for instance).

Oh, I see. I don't know if such a program exists, although maybe the old
COA "Change Of Address" freebie utility from PC Magazine could have handled
it. (I haven't used COA in ages, like back in the Win95 era).

COA was definitely what I had in mind. I probably used COA2. I
haven't had time to test it yet on XP, but one person here iirc and
one on the web said it worked with XP.

Then there is Drive Mapper of Partition Manager 8. They still usually
have one copy of PM8 on ebay, but new copies aren't for sale and later
versions dont' exist. I couldnt' find Drive Mapper for sale separately
(sometimes products are sold in pieces), OTOH, Drive Mapper doesn't
have to manipulate the partition, only read read files (searching the
registry, .bat files, shortcuts and maybe some place else) so even the
PM4's version of Drive Mapper might be work fine, if it can read the
XP registry, and maybe it can. I don't remember what the manual said
about NTFS, but come to think of it, why should that matter? The OS
takes care of reading the files


I'm sure now that testing both COA and Drive Mapper will be easy.
I'll just make a new dummy line in the registry with M:\test\test in
it and then tell each program to go find it and change it. (Then I'll
delete the line, but if I make the line right, it won't matter if
there is an extra line that does nothing.)


Thanks to all for all the suggestions.

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 23:04:26 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

mm wrote:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 13:36:05 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

mm wrote:
On Sat, 2 Oct 2010 12:13:56 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:

dadiOH wrote:
mm wrote:
Program that changes drive letter D: to G: for example.

Five or ten years ago I had a freeware program that would scan the
harddisk and find every place where a drive letter of your choosing
was used, like C: or D:, display a list of them, and give you the
opportunity to change some or all of them to some other drive letter.

Does anyone remember the name of that program? Or part of the name.
Or the author's name?

It would look in the registry and all the .bat files and shortcuts
and some other places that didn't come to my mind years ago until I
saw the author had thought of them (and don't come to my mind today
either.)

It had a simple gui, nothing fancy, but did have white squares,
probably with scroll bars where the names of the files appeared each
with a check box probably.

I have a great need for something like this now.

Thanks.

There is a program called COA (change of address) that purports to do
so. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,9413,00.asp

Hey, that's it! Thanks so much. Newsgroups are so great (and you're
great too. )

Reading more about it, now that I know its name, it was written by
Neil J. Rubenking at Ziff Davis, a name I used to know, and you can dl
it he http://marmro.homeip.net/Description/coa2.zip.html
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000

It doesn't list XP, but one person said it worked fine with XP, but
wouldn't the change in name of the registry file make it
hard/impossible for it to work with XP....unless there is a system
variable that means the registry, like there is for the windows
directory etc. Yes, that must be how it does it, because it also
works with w2000 where the registry is probably also pagefile.sys.

I don't think the registry is "pagefile.sys", but I don't know w2000.

Oh, yeah, thanks for the tactful correction. Pagefile is the swap
file. I don't know if I know what the registry is called. But it
would be in the windows directory, not the root, like this one.

But for Win9x, it's in the two system files, "system.dat" and "user.dat".

Oh, yeah. Two files. I forget the difference beween the two.

For WinXP, I believe there are several files in the registry hive:
DEFAULT,
SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM,

Oh, yeah. This 5 are in windows\system32\config.

There are five sections to the XP registry, Classes, Current User,
Local Machine, Users, and Current Config. Maybe each of them
corresponds to one of your five.

ntuser.dat, UsrClass.dat,

I don't see these, but I didn't migrate from win2000. Maybe that's
why.

It turns out I had these two also, but in a different folder. I
forgot to look at the Date Modified, etc.

Regardless, regedit picks up all of them and if regedit can do it,
maybe COA2 can do it.

but I'm not sure
which ones are which! (Perhaps someone else can clarify)?

(I can't clarify but I can muddle it further! There is a system.dat
file, 8 megs in my case. And User.dat, one meg. But both were last
updated a year ago May. Hmmm. I installed software just last week.
Hmmm. Nothing important has been updated in windows\ directory since
last may, nothing but log files and 5 or 6 others. May 2009 must be
when I transfered my win98 data to XP, which it used to set up winXP
to a large extent.)

I don't understand how it was possible to install some significant software
and NOT update system.dat or user.dat.

Right. From that I deduced that these two files are the win98
Registry, on the day I installed XP. but they are not used in XP,
other than the day they they are copied to XP. That the XP registry
is those five files you also listed.

I used the File and Setting Transfer Wizard, to gether up info from 98
and install it where it needed to go in XP. So maybe it copies over
the whole registry, then goes through the 98 registry looking for
entries that I had created (like by installing software) and it made
corresponding entries in the XP registry. I ran this program once in
98 to gather my personal windows-related data, and once in XP to make
use of the data.

(Now there is also Mozbackup.exe, which only worries about the various
mozilla programs, but it will gather up the bookmarks, passwords,
cookies, history, etc from one OS and then install the stuff in the
other OS

If you install a program, it adds
that info to the registry, which means it HAS to update system.dat and
user.dat (usually both, but not necessarily). Unless....

If you're not "installing" the program, per se, and are simply copying a
*very* simple and basic program (one that doesn't need the registry services
at all), then I can see how. (We're only talking about some really basic
programs at this level, however).

I used COA on Win9x, but don't recall if I tried it on XP or not. But
as
you said, there's probably a good chance it will work there. I've also
done
the manual regedit search and manually replace approach, which is a bit
tedious.

One win98 version of Norton Utilities included a Registry program that
would look for all occurrences of a given search string, at the same
time. Then iirc, you could change them all at once, or probably just
the ones you wanted. Maybe you couldn't change more than one at once,
but at least you could see them all at once, know how many there were,
and decide which ones are important, and which are just Recently
Viewed, for example.

I lost Norton in my crash, too, although I'm sure i have the CD in one
of the piles of CDs. However I have newer Norton CDs, I bought at
hamfests. ONe is 2003, so it should work with XP, but I can't install
it until I get the other things done and migrate to a newer (2003)
computer, so I don't know what all it has.

I gave up on Norton after around 2001. Too much bloat, that, and all the
horror stories i read about trying to uninstall it, and/or the problems it
was creating on so many systems.

Yeah, when Symantec or Norton had newsgroups, I read a lot about
uninstall problems nad it scared me off. (Even though for a couple
years I had both NAV and AVG running live at the same time, without
any of the predicted problems. Most of the time, AVG found the virus,
but sometimes Norton did, which made me glad that it was there. My
impression was that if the virus only had a one part name, like Cher
or Liberace or Hildegard (before your time?) that was when Norton
found it and not AVG.

Norton was great in its heyday, however.
The only Norton I've got installed here (on my XP system) is the latest
edition of Partition Magic (8.0), because I needed a decent Partition
Manager.

Well they didn't write it anyhow. Powerquest did.

But on my Win98SE computer, I still use BootItNG in the
Maintenance Mode only (for partition work), But it is a bit less intuitive,
however.

I'm about 5 days into a 30 day free trial. So far, I'm still
confused, but it's too early to ask questoins.

(I bought Norton versions mostly to get Cleansweep so I could move
programs with that. Some versions have it and some don't.

I had Cleansweep with my Win95 system. Maybe the later version(s) worked
well in Win98 - don't know. But I generally don't use such utilities, and
as for registry cleaners, well, we can save that one for another day. I
don't feel like revisting that one. :-)

Okay.

Before the
crash I had 8 partitions, because there was a limit on partition size,
so for lack of the ability to plan I had a greater need to move things
than I do now.).

I also think there are some basic registry editors that will do a
search and replace to replace all references of a drive letter (for
example)
with another, but you have to be *very* careful with that. (I think I
did
that before with the drive letter colon attached (like replace "E:" with
"F:" for example), or better yet, "E:\" with "F:\", for example)..

Yes, I can see why caution is needed.

And just to clarify the above, I simply meant using a text search and
replace option - not that there is an explicit drive letter replacement
option in those basic registry editors.

I remember for sure that COA2 gave the option to say yes or no to each
thing it found.

That's another reason to my test with the phony registry entry, to see
what COA2 and Drive Mapper do, to make sure that Drive Mapper also
givves one the chance to say yes or no. The manual makes it sound
lke either Drive Mapper runs automatically, or you have to change
entries totally manaully. I don't like that.

It also mentions .ini files as a place where drive letters and fully
qualified names are used. I knew there was one other place, in
addition to shortcuts, and the registry, and iirc one other place.

It says "If you are using Windows NT or Windows 2000/XP Professional
as your only operating system, we recommend using the Change Drive
Letter operation rather than DriveMapper."

So it does konw about XP. But I don't know yet about "Change Drive
Letter".

I wonder why this is only a recommendation. Certainly there are times
when I woudl want to change file name refe

"Change Drive Letter lets you permanently set the drive letters for
your partitions so that adding and removing partitions does not affect
drive letters. Note that if you merge or split partitions, drive
letters will change even if you are using Windows NT/2000/XP and the
Change Drive Letter operation" But that doesn't do everything COA2
does. With COA2, if you decide to move all your Wordperfect data files
from one place to another, well I have to check. I'll try to get back
to you with details of how that works.

This is a strange paragraph:
"If you have installed an alternative desktop on Windows 9x with the
desktop files residing on a different drive than the Windows system
files, DriveMapper may not be able to adjust your paths. Because
DriveMapper is a Windows program, it must have Windows loaded
to run. If the drive letter has been changed for the drive that holds
your desktop files, you may not be able to start Windows"

It seems to me anyone smart enough to install an alternative desktop,
or add, merge, split, or delete a partition, shouldn't need the
desktop files to start a program. Drive Mapper doesn't use any
switches, parameters, or arguments, as I suspected.

Enough for now.

On Sun, 03 Oct 2010 18:23:26 -0400, mm
wrote:


And just to clarify the above, I simply meant using a text search and
replace option - not that there is an explicit drive letter replacement
option in those basic registry editors.

Noted. Just searching the whole registry could get tedious, let
alone changing drive letters, although if one doesn't change the
windows partition letter, maybe there wouldn't be many entries to
change.

If you have no chance of using File Mapper of Partition Magic, you can
all skip the rest. Or even the preceding, but it's probably too late
for that.

I remember for sure that COA2 gave the option to say yes or no to each
thing it found.

That's another reason to my test with the phony registry entry, to see
what COA2 and Drive Mapper do, to make sure that Drive Mapper also
givves one the chance to say yes or no. The manual makes it sound
lke either Drive Mapper runs automatically, or you have to change
entries totally manaully. I don't like that.

My previous post was very encouraging about both COA2 and Drive
Mapper, but further reading of the PM8 manual yielded this:

Using DriveMapper With Multiple Operating Systems
If you run multiple operating systems, you should reinstall applications rather than use
DriveMapper.

Maybe. It worked out for me that all partitions have the same Drive
letter whether I"m in 98 or XP.

The following issues make using DriveMapper in a multiple operating
system environment difficult and error-prone:
• Drive letter assignments are based on the file systems supported by an operating
system. If you do not put all FAT32 and NTFS partitions after all FAT partitions,
drive letters will change depending on the operating system currently running, and

I only have FAT32. Maybe this is another reason not to use NTFS also.
In another ng, one or two people are saying that NTFS isn't better
after all, and that since it's a proprietary MS file system, that
causes some other problems. I havent' finished the thread yet, or
looked this up on the web.

DriveMapper may be unable to correctly identify which changes should be made.
• Registry settings are changed for the current operating system only. If you manually
run DriveMapper from another operating system, references in files will already be
changed in the current operating system and further changes will introduce errors in
the other operating systems.

Duh, then you should only run drive mapper from one OS. You have to
plan this sort of thing anyhow. If you want to change D: references
to E: and E: reference to F:, you have to do the second one first, or
all the D: references will also become F:.

I only have PM installed in one partition anyhow.

I am glad they mention this problem and the others, however. It
reminds me what problems I have to take effort to prevent.


• When DriveMapper is running, files contained in hidden partitions are not updated. If

I'm too curious to use hidden partitions. I'd always want to know
what was hiding.

you are using multiple primary partitions for different operating systems, only the
active primary partition may be visible to be updated.

So none of these warnings are so bad, but the overriding problem is
that once started, it runs automatically afaict. It doesn't say that
explicity, it says "PowerQuest recommends that you allow DriveMapper
to automatically update the drive letter references in shortcuts,
[etc.]when prompted to do so. However, you can update drive letter
references manually". I think this means totally manually, like
using regedit to find references and then typing in each change
separately. I'll run it with that test line and see if it means
that.

COA2 is looking better and better. I'll run that too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

Third-party Software Will not help you !
If you mated XP in NTFS http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm NTFS vs.
FAT32

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154997 Description of the FAT32 File
System

NOTE: Although the FAT32 file system supports hard disks up to 2 terabytes
in size,
some hard disks may not be able to contain bootable partitions that are
larger than 7.8 GB
because of limitations in your computer's basic input/output system (BIOS)
INT13 interface.
Please contact your hardware manufacturer to determine if your computer's
BIOS supports the updated INT13 extensions.
For additional information about FAT32, click the article number below to
view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
253774 Common Questions About the FAT32 File System
Back to the top

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_pa....2C_and_OS.2F2

If you Made your XP partitions in to NTFS and not a FAT32
your Windows 98 may not work no more Because it need XP as a FAT32 so
that win98 can Boot in DOS.....

Compaq CMOS SETUP Software on the Mother Board assigns drive first
The F10 key is used to access them from the HDD on boot .
Press F10 AFTER the memory test completes.
Boot Order
CD-ROM Drive First
Floppy Drive (A Second
Hard Drive (C Third

Hard Drive (C Microsoft MS-DOS assigns drive letters is Software on the
Hard Drive if that OS on it....

My BCM Computer that I have a Elo Touchscreen on it
Whizpro BIOS SETUP Utility
Press F2 AFTER the memory test completes.

General Configuration
1st Boot Device: CDROM
2nd Boot Device: Floppy A
3rd Boot Device: HDD-0
4th Boot Device: LS-120

Now on all 4 I can pick from a list too
Disabled, Floppy A, HHD-0, CDROM, HHD-1, HHD-2, HHD-3, SCSI/Add-on, ZIP100,
LS-120, LAN, USB Floppy A, USB Disk,

1st Boot Device: CDROM
2nd Boot Device: HDD-1 I have win3.0 here, I believe run it to day LOOL.
But on win3.0 no Elo Touchscreen !
3rd Boot Device: HDD-0 I have Win98 and XP here
4th Boot Device: LS-120 Win98 set up
see Software on the Hard Drive do not start the Boot it's the CMOS Software
that get the ball rolling!

"FromTheRafters" erratic @nomail.afraid.org wrote in message
...
"Hot-Text" wrote in message
...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/51978

[...]

On Sun, 3 Oct 2010 20:08:32 -0500, "Hot-Text"
wrote:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_pa....2C_and_OS.2F2

If you Made your XP partitions in to NTFS and not a FAT32
your Windows 98 may not work no more Because it need XP as a FAT32 so
that win98 can Boot in DOS.....

Yes, I used nothing but FAT32, because I wanted to be able to read
data in one OS while I was in the other.

In fact, I left my Agent and Eudora in win98, made XP shortcuts, and
use the very same files when I'm in XP.

Just like I did when I moved back and forth between win3.1 and win98.
It means the move doesn't have to be done all at once. It can take
years.

Thanks.

win3.1 is run on a 16fat DOS and win98 is on 32fat DOS can stop win98 from
booting.

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 23:32:47 +0000 (UTC),
(Hot-Text) wrote:

win3.1 is run on a 16fat DOS and win98 is on 32fat DOS can stop win98 from
booting.

I guess that means I was using FAT16 then for both, or some other
method where that wasn't a problem, because I know it worked.

Thanks.

Yes TRUE at first HMM
And the Start Boot Manu was moving you pass the fat16 Command.com to fat32
Command.com at first on to C:\WONDOWS\ to run the WIN.EXE. For Win98 will
not run on a fat16 Command.com
For XP do not need the Command.com to Start Running.. it runs it on NTFS
Boot.
For you can install 2000, XP and up, on all Systems and it will run YES
Linux Systems too!

So if you make XP a FAT32 in the XP Systems... XP make a little NTFS Folder
for it Booting..
That why you see that Bar running fast a crass the bottom of the page at
start up Booting of NTFS
if you have see it that's a good thing!!

now how to fix fat16 Command.com to fat32 Command.com back the way it
was!
you the first one to do this one I Know if
But as you have say::: in time by one at a time in the right way to do!

Bill in Co
We need you're here!



"mm" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 23:32:47 +0000 (UTC),
(Hot-Text) wrote:

win3.1 is run on a 16fat DOS and win98 is on 32fat DOS can stop win98 from
booting.

I guess that means I was using FAT16 then for both, or some other
method where that wasn't a problem, because I know it worked.

Thanks.