How to change a drive letter in Windows XP
From ArticleWorld
If you installed a new hard drive and Windows doesn't assign it the right letter, or if you picked a wrong one during installation, you will want to change the letter Windows assigns to a drive. Windows XP allows you to do this very easily.
- First, close any programs you may have running. This can be safely skipped in some cases (Windows will warn you to close a program if this is needed) but it's a good precaution to take.
- Right click on My Computer and select Manage from the pop-up menu. This will open a new window.
- On the sidebar of the new window, choose Disk Management.
- Right click on the letter you want to choose and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths". Windows will issue some warnings which you should read closely. Drivers which are shown to be "Online" have their letter in the media area.
- In the pop-up window that appears, click "Change...". This will pop-up a new window.
- On the right side, you will see a menu with the available drive letters. Select the one that you want.
- Windows will pop-up a warning now, reminding you that some programs installed on that drive may not work anymore if you change the drive letter. If you are sure that you are doing what you have to do, click "Yes". Note that Windows will display a warning if you are running a program that uses the drive whose letter you want to change. If you are sure that this is not the case (and usually it is) or that it won't affect anything, you can click Yes. Otherwise, click No, find that program and close it.
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Important notes
It is very important to remember that changing the drive letter of the drive from which Windows runs will most likely have a negative impact on your computer. Unless this is what you want (and usually, this is not the case), you should not change this drive's letter.