Friend needs help with drive letters

[Faize]

My friends harddrive started to fail him so following some peoples information he had swapped letters then went to switch the old failing drive with a newer one. he found that his C: drive had become D: and his D: is now C: which derailed his ability to boot the computer. We tried to use the commands to switch it in a boot disk his disk is win 7 but has win 10 {upgrade version no disk}. can someone tell me how we could with the windows 7 boot disk try to reset his drives or if we need to reinstall Windows 7 and upgrade again or not.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

If it were mine, I would try to install Windows 10 on the 'new/working' drive - this is based on the assumption that I had previously installed Windows 10 on the 'old/failing' drive and had gotten it properly authorized through Windows Update.

http://www.howtogeek.com/226510/how...10-license-after-changing-your-pc’s-hardware/

Be sure to backup any important files before doing this.

 

[Faize]

It was autherized as it was the upgrade but he doesn't have the actual windows 10 disk as t was the free upgrade that windows 10 had for windows 7 users that he has. I posted this in his behalf due the the fact he can't get in to type as easily as me with the tablet he used to contact me on

 

[Cycloid Torus]

So download Windows 10 ISO and burn a CD or FlashDrive - authorization is AT Microsoft servers

 

[Gourry32]

As of right now my PC has just my primary hard drive in and I am not able to load windows. I am using my tablet to type this and the only way I can see if my hard drives are there in order is using the cmd on my windows 7 CD. I have no idea if I can get back to normal boot unless I reinstall windows 7 and see ifbu can upgrade to 10. I am not even sure if I can get the other two drives to be seen ad they should be. Also to note my primary hard drive is partitioned as C: and D:, my second hard drive is partitioned as E: and F: and my third drive is just G:.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

You can do it your way, but I think unnecessarily complex.

Hopefully, you have backed up all important files.

Since you already have Windows10 authorized for the machine and that is recorded on the Microsoft Update servers, you can install Windows 10 on your system. You might wish to remove the 'failing' drive and then, using Windows 10 ISO, do a clean install.

I am confused when you say "my PC has just my primary hard drive" and in the same paragraph you say "my primary hard drive is partitioned as C: and D:, my second hard drive is partitioned as E: and F: and my third drive is just G:" Do you need 3 physical drives in order to get a working install of Windows10? What is the purpose of all these partitions?

 

[Gourry32]

I thought my friends post was clear enough,but I guess not..

Here is the issue. For years my primary and secondary drives ha e been partitioned and my secondary hard drive started to fail. So two days ago I used melcarum mirror to try and clone that drive to a new hard drive. It failed at 87% and so I copied F: over since E: was successful they I renamed E and F so I could rename the new drive those letters then I turned off my PC and swayed out the bad one and booted my pc up. But it did not work, it made drive C to drive E and drive D to C. I now cannot boot into windows and though I managed to put just my primary in and it sees C as it should I still cannot boot. So I do not know what to do

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Just making copies does not necessarily mean you have a 'bootable' drive. Hidden files, registry entries, freshened drivers, etc make it all pretty complex. The fail at 87% probably means something critical broke.

Make good backups as you can.

Remove everything except a future boot drive (it can be an 80 GB IDE drive if you have one or the new drive with the failed transfer files).
Locate and install a clean copy of Windows 10 ISO - full format, not 'quick'.
Confirm that it is authorized by Microsoft Updates
Install and re-organize your drives - one at a time - until you have gotten it into a logical order AND retrieved as much as you can from your failing drive.
No magic wands, sorry.

If that really confuses things for you, consider a Linux ISO boot from CD or USB - and work from there to make good backups.

 

[Gourry32]

No my primary hard drive was fine as in nit failing at all. It was my 2nd hard drive that was failing andnintried to clone that drive to. The new one. But it failed at 87%, butni got letter drive E cloned and so I moved the data on F to the new F partition, but when I switched out the bad drive and tried to boot it put my OS drive as letter E and so I could not boot at all. My computer is reading the drive letter as basically this at the moment: G, D, C, E, F.

 

[Faize]

Ok.. Even I have to chime up here being I am a programmer and not a hardware tech but even I have enough common sense to say that if it was the PRIMARY or not in my Origin post at the top.. I didn't.. means the main drive is fine.. the ONLY problem is the drives are not reading the letters right.. the C drive/primary ISN'T labeled C to the comps data thus Gourry here can't get into the pc.. which I did mention of that.. AND that he didn't have access to the pc means he COULDN"T download the data to make a disk without outside help. heck I even posted this for him to start.. Now my question in his place to the start still stands and STILL isn't answered correctly considering we both clearly said he didn't have access to windows/ the pc.. and seeing I had first spoken means he likely didn't have access to another to even first type this up.. Forgive my anger and now very cross mood but kindly Cycloid. Do not waste more of our time if your not going to spend the few mins it would take to actually READ what was fully said and ask me to confirm what you didn't understand of it prior.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Pal, I read it. I read your last messages too. Seems you have 3 physical drives and somehow you ended up with your boot partition for your primary drive identified as drive G (I think - it IS confusing - but that is how I interpret G,D,C,E,F).

I program a bit (starting with Fortran 77) and I build and fix my own machines for longer than you've been alive.

Obviously, I cannot help you any further than I have, so why not check to see if the answers are here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/223188

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1853805/change-boot-drive-letter-back.html

Bye now.