Windows 10: Can I change my Windows drive J: to C: without too much of a hassle?

Can you change the system partition (including Windows & programs) from J: to C: without a lot of hassle?

Let me explain:
My mom's PC was old and still running on Windows XP. Years ago she had a crash and someone restored her PC. Because of the restoration everything was relocated to the J: partition. Her J: partition acts like a normal C: partition, but I want to give it a go correcting it.

I managed the following; I cloned her old harddisk (with Clonezilla) to a new harddisk and installed it in a new PC. From there I removed a bunch of old programs and cleaned it up (quite) a bit. After that I cloned the contents to a SSD. And the (new) PC booted into Windows XP (without issues), something which I didn't expect to quite honest (ofcourse a lot of drivers missing, but no problem).

Anyways from there I upgraded to Vista > Windows 7 > Windows 10, while keeping all of her original programs and settings. Normally I would do a complete install, but she has many "old" programs which aren't being sold anymore and / or she didn't save the license information / serials for those programs.

Her PC is now running fine (and much better) on Windows 10 + SSD. I also installed a harddisk mainly for pictures and backups. Installing the harddisk was kind of a pain. After installing it, the PC wouldn't boot anymore into Windows 10. After spending several days on this, I finally discovered that the registry was messed up and had to load the registry remotely (thanks to Hirens Bootcd) and correct everything from C: to J: (as it originally was on her PC). I think because I added the harddisk it made some registry changes and causing it not to boot anymore. Anyways, long story short, it's working now again.

So now I am trying to make her (new) PC a bit normal by changing her current Windows partition from J: to C:.
I don't know if this is possible and that I maybe should leave it as it is, as it's working now. Also she is used to the fact that J: is her default partition. But, if it's possible, it's something I would consider doing. But I would like to know what the professionals in here think of this.

(sorry for my long story, but wanted to be as detailed as possible)

If it's too much of a hassle or to dangerous (resulting non-booting or non-starting programs, due to drive letter change, just say so, I will leave it as it is.

:)

 

Windows 10: What will happen if I install all the software on my system drive (C drive)?

This is a question I have for quite a long time. I used to install all the software on my other drives so that the c drive will only contain my OS. But back then it is because my c drive does not have too much space. Now I try to build a new pc with a
much larger ssd as my system drive. So I wonder can I just install all the software on my c drive without causing lagging? Is it gonna lower the boot speed?

 

Corrupt partition not harddisk

Before I did a system restore all my drives and partitions are working. Unfotunately after this, windows is not loading and had a message that my page file is 0mb but everytime I click the button, change, windows become not responding. I tried safe mode
to change pagefile to my C drive but same issue is it freezes. Then I notice a hard drive error notificatiom and saw that my J driver is showing as "Local Disk" instead of the Volume Name, But the other partition (E) on then same hard disk is showing correctly.

So I unplug the disk for these partitions (J & E) and windows 10 loaded without issue.

But everytime I enable the harddisk issue comes back.

So plug the harddisk again and I went to safe mode with command prompt and decided to hide the partition using the following command

mountvol J:/ \D

And this hide the problematic J partition. Restarted my PC and now it works!

I went to compubter management and I can see the hidden partition. I can access E without issues I can open folder etc.

Is the a tool I could use to check the integrity of the partition. Is this a disk problem? If it's corrupt is there a tool I could use to fix this?

 

I had Windows installed on a different letter drive back in the Win 7 days. After long discussions on the Windows 7 forum it appeared there was no way to do it without a complete new install. I just left it as is since everything was working. Later, I built a new PC and did a complete new install and got back to the "C" drive for the OS.

Unless there are major problems, I would leave it as is. It doesn't matter to the Operating System what letter drive its installed on.

 

I'd leave it. Have a look in regedit and see how many thousands of entries you'd have to update from J to C and that will put you off.

Even if you did all them without making a typo then there are also other (unknown) places where paths are hardcoded (configuration files in appdata for example).

 

Ix07, thanks for the rep. We both agree.

 

About the license keys: Have you tried Belarc Adviser? It will show you keys, assuming its aware of them, that is.

Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit, for software, hardware and security configuration information on your computer. Software license management, IT asset management, cyber security audits, and more.

 

Was this reply meant for another thread?

 

Yeah, that's what I figured guys. I skimmed through the registry past week, but really too many keys to change or edit. She has tons of programs installed (that's why I had to go through the pain of cloning and upgrading from XP all the way through Windows 10).

I will just leave it as it is then. Everything works now (even her old programs). The J: partition only looks weird for me, but my mom can work with it. So all good I guess.

I am now only exporting all of her emails from Incredimail (biggest junk ever invented imho, no offence) to Thunderbird. Which is a lot of work, I can tell you that. *Smile

Anyways, thanks for all the responses. Highly appreciated. *Smile

 

Taken from 1st Post:

 

Sorry for bumping my old thread, but I found some problems with my mother's PC.

I checked the event logs and I noticed a ton of errors. Which are created almost every 3-5 seconds.

Source: ESENT
ID: 490
svchost (1464) SRUJet: <dutch> c:\windows\system32\SRU\SRUDB.dat <dutch> Systemerror 1005 (0x000003ed): (translated from Dutch) The volume doesn't contain a recognisable systemfile. <dutch> 1022 (0xfffffc02).

I want to fix this error, but no clue were or how. As mentioned above Windows is installed on the J:\ partition (was because of a crash/backup years ago).

Is there a registry setting for this somewhere, which I can change from C:\ to J:\, so I can fix this error. I checked the registry for anything related to ESENT, but couldn't find anything.

I hope this is fixable. Thank you for your time.

 

Well I think I solved it, the errors are gone and the machine is also "snappier" now.
I removed the drive which was being displayed as C: (which was CF/something) and it created the file on J: automatically. Weird. But fixed. *Smile