Just installed Windows XP SP2 - it assigned drive letter F: - How to change to C:?

I am having Windows XP laptop. I had recently formatted and installed Windows XP on the same. Now there is some issue with the system partition. by default the partition is assigned as letter F instead of C. How can I change that. There is no letter C anywhere in any of the existing partition. The issue occurred due to a flash drive that was incorrectly installed on my pc. What should I do to fix the problem.

You can do that from Disk Management. Right click on My Computer > and click on Manage. Then go to the drive sections below. Right click on the partition who's letter you want to change. Just right click and change the drive letter. That's all. There will be no issues with the same. I always do this with my external drive. My pc is having some problem with the drive letter. But I can assign that manually from disk management.

I am a bit confused with your problem. You said that your windows partition is not having the right drive letter. You can manage the partitions by Easeus Partition Manager. This is one of the best tool available on the web that can help you to fix the partition problems. It works really simple. You can merge or split partition as per your need and even assign different device letter. Just try the same and then rename the file partition.

The process is a little long but along the way I learned a few things and discovered a super free program "Super Grub Disk" - http://www.supergrubdisk.org/.

My machine is triple boot - 2 Linux's + Windows-XP.

• I created a slipstream Windows-XP SP3 install disk to simplify re-install using nLite (http://www.nliteos.com/).
• Took a full backup of the user files.
• Opened the box and disconnected all the USB devices - a media Combo card with USB, SVHS, IEEE 1394 in my case.
• Ran through the Microsoft process to change the registry (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/) on the existing install, swapping the devices F: and C: in the registry. If you do not do this, the Windows installer finds a previous install, looks in its registry and follows this, not what you want! The alternative is to re-format the partition so it is totally empty.
• Tried the repair route but it was a disaster - everything installed knew it was on F: not C: and failed because F: was now missing! Even if the old "Change of Address" program worked on newer systems I suspect it would have missed some script files and led to odd future errors ......
• Did the re-install which strangely did not overwrite my MBR - but when I later installed the drivers which came with my main board, that did cause the MBR to be overwritten with a Windows boot not my original Grub with 3 OS's.
• I got a machine with an almost dead graphics system - during boot-up it looked 1024x768 but then swapped to 640x480 VGA when the login screen came up and resolutely refused to move to a better resolution until I had the main-board graphics driver for Nvidia 8200 installed - probably should have built the driver into my new Windows-XP install disk when I made it from the 3 year old one I bought! Anyway, once the correct graphics driver was in place it got easier.
• The windows install was OK. I restored all the user files but again slipped up because I had not ensured the machine name/workgroup was identical to previous - the boot had come up in Domain mode so I had "username.domainname" in "Documents and Settings" instead of simple "username". So all the restores went to the wrong place - fixed almost all of this by simply copying the files forcibly to the correct places. This was a silly mistake but very easily done!
• Found a brilliant but not fool proof program to fix GRUB and overwrite the Windows MBR - Super grub Disk from http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ . This comes in several versions, an "Auto for Windows" version which works for some but not for others - it failed for me but the Wiki had a fix - use the bootable CD version. So I downloaded the ISO and burned it, booted it and simply followed the instructions. It found my GRUB files in my Linux installs, gave me a choice of which to use and re-installed the MBR. This is great program for fixing problems and also for learning about the boot process by playing with a boot able machine knowing that unless you really mess up (delete the original set-up completely at the end you can recover. Allows what you read in tutorials etc. to be applied in a relatively safe environment. It can also - I think - Remove Grub and put the Windows MBR back as the main boot control.
• Now just finishing re-installing all the software. Windows is so much more painful to do this on than Linux where I could have simply sucked the programs and data back from a dump - no need for a re-install of most things. It has taken me ages even after I copied all the install disks on to disk to speed things up a bit.

This worked for me. I hope it helps others though I suspect different minor issues will pop up.

When i got this problem all i did was just exited the installation process by pressing f3 i believe. then booted the cd again this time everything was perfect and it was showing C: instead of F:. Hope this help u :)

and if u have already installed in F: then just delete that drive from the bootable cd and just create a new partition if it shows F: no problem just Exit and boot again u will get that blank drive as C: