I am a software developer, and most of my apps use predefined path locations(since it's more convenient). But as soon as I watched this video, I rushed to quickly change all my libraries to work with %systemdrive% instead
Well... I suggest to let the user install it on any path and use system varibles for windows and programfiles folder. In an industrial enviroment usually we install everything with default setting because we know that most industrial software was never properly tested.... Many of them does not have a software tester and never heard of such.
@D Tibor I set up my apps to work wherever they are (as long as they have all the required Dlls which are installed automatically), the default path being %programfiles%. And their installer allows for custom paths. The primary issue I found after watching this video was that when I wanted to get the program data, I would just use "C:\Users\" + Username + "\Appdata". And a few other functions that worked with paths had this issue. Now I have a function that checks for 2 % simbols and replaces it with its respective enviroment path variabile. Same for shell: paths.
U can always make a small C drive and fill it up with symbolic links to the A drive. That way the programs using C drive by default will be redirected to A
That a really genius idea! :D Not sure, though, how it would deal with the space. As I understand, when working with symbolic links, the space is taken from the destination (aka A drive).
I think enderman made a video in which he showed that any Unicode Charakter is valid as a drive letter in Windows. Would be interesting to see if you can install Windows to a drive thats called 1: or something...
I opened the comments section just to see if someone said ahout Enderman's video, i don't remember but i think he used Linux and it is mindblowing the thing he did.
There are also special versions of Windows where the default letter for the installation volume is A. Back in the MS-DOS days, the most popular series of PCs in Japan was NEC's PC-9800 series of PCs. These computers were not compatible with standard MS-DOS and had a special version of DOS that was compatible with those computets, but where the boot drive would always be the A drive (so it didn't matter if you installed DOS on a hard drive or if you booted from a floppy disk, the boot drive was always A). Eventually, versions of Windows would be ported to PC-9800 series computers, and the PC-9800 editions of Windows would also by default use A as the letter for the installation volume
Well now I have another idea of how I can confuse my friends. First I made it look like my computer somehow "downgraded" from Windows 10 to 7 (it was a windows 7 vm that was in full screen mode that I made for fun). Now I can't imagine how they'll react to not seeing a different drive letter on a vm.
Yes. Tried it in my machine and indeed it shows up as B. If B is already taken as well, then it will just take the next letter of the alphabet available like anything else does. Yes, that includes C: if it happens to be an unassigned drive letter.
@@gammaboostthey don't, they are just basing it on the fact that it's common for most programs to incorrectly do it that way and viruses are just programs that you don't want running
This would be an interesting experiment to see how much hard coding of windows path programs have done. Also some virus may not work if it is hard coded to assume c drive.
Good video Thio, I didn't know that was possible! Btw can you make a video of "What if you eject and delete the ENTIRE C: drive?", It would be hella cool
How would you 'eject' a hard disk? Do you mean just pull it out while its running? You'd just get a blue screen or the PC would lock up. Fail to see how that would be 'cool'.
Desktop background go black. Only recycle bin icon shows up Only programs loaded in the ram work Error message do not display text When you restart windows 11 it will fix itself. Do not know what happens if you delete it tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had WinNT on D: a long while ago. Win98 on C: (because of an early MP3-player that needed Win98 to be loaded through a parallel port, which couldnt'd be done in NT). When I removed C: a bit later, I ended up with D: for the OS, and E: for the data. I had a virtual C: mounted somewhere on D:, so programs that insisted on C: did even work...
The installer for XP and earlier used the MS-DOS rules for assigning drive letters. So if you tried to install XP on, for example, a logical drive in an extended partition, you’d end up with it installed on D: or E:. Only in Vista did they start using the selected install partition as C: no matter what.
I once accidentally set the system driver letter to E while cloning a drive to an ssd. It booted after some registry edits. many apps failed to run so I added the C as a 2nd letter for the osdisk and it was fine.
What a time to come across this vid. I'm at the moment using the free version of 'AOMEI' Partition Assistant' (Standard Edition.) I'm a bit blown away by it. One of the options is to 'letter' the partitions. A-Z is available and takes about 5 seconds. I'd suggest downloading it just for a look.
Back when Windows was a graphical shell running on DOS I always installed DOS on C and Windows on D. It just seemed to run better and it kept the two operating systems separate.
Back in the 1990's playing around I figured out how to change the drive letter in Windows, they thought to myself this probably isn't a good idea - and it wasn't.
Back in the day, the A and B drives were for the two floppy (the real kind) drives were assigned to them by default as they came before hard drives (IIRC). So by default, the C drive then represented the primary hard drive going forward and as an industry, everyone stayed with that for compatibility.
You can, you just have to manually assign those drives to A: and B: in disk management, as Windows will outright refuse to assign anything to A or B unless they are the only letters left (or the device is a floppy drive).
I have understood the principle of how to change the "drive path", I have more or less been familiar with it for a very long time. "But" on the other hand, I wonder if it is possible to create an own drive path, let me explain, and by that I don't mean the main disk where the operating system is located, but rather the other disks. - Let's say I have a hard drive that has driver path F:\ and is not tied to the main disk, pone that I would like to get it to the following execution 10:\ is this possible ? - Because as I understand it, disk driver's path's are limited to the alphabet which means that I can only use A:\ to Z:\ , after this it is not possible to folder network additional disks, of which I ask this question if it is possible to use "numbers" instead of letters. Is it possible that you understand my complicated question? :)
3:34 (idk if you know this) but pro tip, to save time instead of doing "list volume" or "list partition", do "lis vol", or "lis par", it still works, and saves time, this applies to other commands in diskpart
I can confirm that adobe lightroom shows A: drive with the latest version of Lightroom. I have the letter A set to my ssd which has my lr catalog and all the photos.
I'd love to know how it can happen that bcdedit does not show the "correct" drive letter if you did *not* resize or move the partition. Also, I'd like to know what happens if you do *not* fix that (does it boot into recovery and change the letter back to C:?) In the BCD file, usually (at least when doing a clean install) there is not stored any drive letters, but instead partition IDs and partition offsets, and bcdedit will convert to the actual drive letter once you view it (you can test this by booting WinPE (or Windows Setup), change drive letters (they won't persist across reboot) and look at bcdedit and the drive letters will appear differently. But yes, I did not know this method, but like it better than running X:\sources\setup from inside an already installed Windows (which, up to at least Win10, also results into a changed drive letter). I often have to edit DosDevices when cloning your disk to a different media type/size, so I understand why this works. I also fear that these kind of hacks might not survive a version upgrade (or cause problems during settings migration). But for a nice test machine (or some "Windows To Go"), I'd totally go for it.
I have a question: “what would happen if you plug in so many USBs/devices that it surpasses the “Z:” Drive.” “How would windows react if all drive letters are currently in use and you try to add another USB/device?”
If all letters are full windows simply won't assign a drive letter but the disk will show in disk manager. Where you will need to assign a mount point to access it... Say C:/ThisFolderIsUSB/ Anything on that folder would save to the drive that doesn't have the letter. So you can technically have infinite drives as mount points.
If you have that many storage devices you could also go the Linux/MacOS route of assigning them to folders instead of letters. This is fully supported by Windows, though the tool does note that it could cause some bugs due to poorly programmed apps.
I'm gonna try this the next time I install Windows 10 as a comeback to Windows. Edit: I don't know whether I can install Windows 11 on my laptop, because the operating system wants a TPM 2.0 chip in that. Another thing, the Windows 11 ISO image is really large actually. I'll just install Windows 11 and try this anyway.
I just installed Windows Vista on the second partition with Windows XP on the first, using Windows XP. Then restarted to Windows Vista. And... The system drive was F:\ like this drive in Windows XP for some reason. Then I could just delete Windows XP partition :)
The official way of doing this is using an unattended install. The unattened install script allows you to setup all the drive letters of your partiion. It requires that you repartition the dtive in the unattended setup so is not suitable for everyone. There is a website that will generate an unattended script file that you place on a windows install usb stick which means the drive will auto install windows erasing everything on any machine that boots it so you need to be extra careful with a usb stick configured for unattended install
That doesn't work with A: and B:, but it will work with D: though Z: Unattented install scripts will error out and fail if A or B is selected as the drive letter.
Back in the pre-Vista days, I normally put Windows on anything BUT the C: drive. It was always interesting to see which programs had hysterics when not finding C:\Windows or whatever. (I also renamed "Program Files" to "Programs" and "Documents and Settings" to "Users" cuz the original names bothered me.)
There are very common-sense reasons for doing this: Anybody who wants to install multiple OSs for a multi-boot system needs it. I have a Win7 partition that I'm still rockin', but decided too many devs have moved to the spyware-laden 11. Yet, installing it from a USB kept insisting on calling the drive it was on "C:". This hack works, and allowed me to install on E:. Working on Win11 22H2. Some software manufacturer. How many OSs in history made you get an expensive Server edition in order to install anywhere else than C:??? Epic hack, for those who need it, ThioJoe!
Nothing in windows should ever directly reference the c drive and nothing in win itself does. That's not why it only works that early, that has to do with a and b being used for special purposes and are therefor busy after first boot. Any other drive letter is super simple to change to after boot. There's just lots of poorly coded programs that reference c: rather than use env var.
Been there done that (ish), one of my x-wifes computers were divided to an extremely small C: and a huge D: "for data" as the support said, however there were no room to install programs to C, so I had to try to D:, and run into the same kind of problems as adobe lightroom. Don't actually recall which program, but I gave up and wiped, clean installed onto all disc is C:
Hey guys and ThioJoe, I use my PC mainly for gaming (both native games and emulators), has Windows 11 reached a point where I should upgrade to it instead of sticking to 10 until the end of its support ? Btw, I really like videos like this where you show us how to do stuff that normally we wouldn't be able to do just to goof around.
Personally, I like Windows 11 a lot more than Windows 10, so I would advise you to update. But that's your decision and you should probably first wait for others to respond
The EU forced MS to break Windows. N is the first letter of NFG. No media players, no cell phone connectivity, just the EU doing what the EU does best: effing with consumers. And you wonder why the U.K. left?
Isn't this possible by simply installing windows to an existing empty partition that already assigned with alternate letter? because i'm sure when I did that in the past, it kept the original drive letter that I assigned to that partition. Which in this case was not "C".
"You are always vulnerale to viruses". Windows on A letter which would make the path the virus targets change and so would make a lot of scripts unvalid:
Nobody said it was impossible...the reason that windows or OS installation's default to the letter "C" was because "A" and "B" were taken up by FDD's, most notably the 5.25" and then the 3.5"... Because those basically don't exist anymore, unless you're running systems that still support them, you can re-letter the OS drive to any of the 26 letters of the alphabet, should you desire to do so...
I have done this by accident because sometimes I install Windows from inside Windows via /sources/setup.exe. Windows just sets up with the drive letter as mounted on the running system. So when I need to install Windows to a partrition, set as D:, it will setup as D: This has sometimes caused problems, and sometimes just been cool to see. I really advise program makers to install to %systemdrive% instead of C:\
many programs will assume windows drive is letter C. also (may not really matter) many tutorials and instructions assume windows drive c. They're hard coded for C:\ drive instead of relying on environment variables... those silly variables what do they know. they think they're better than me? nu-uh... I'm better than me.
I was able to do this on Windows 7 by running the installer on an existing windows installation and targetting an already formatted ntfs partition. But this doesn't work with the windows 10 installer anymore
This path "mounted devices" on registry was helpfull when my cloned (dd tool used ) install didnt want to go to desktop ( black screen only loading icon stuck) . the solution was to erase all things inside there with remote registry , and re-create an EFi folder .
So looks like its already kind of answered in the comments. But would there be any security benefit to this? As in you download malicious software.. but because you have an A drive.. its like wtf?. Lol
You madman! You are messing with the natural order of things! I hope you understand the powers that you are disrupting when reality starts melting and dimensions collapsing! 🤣
what if you use a 3rd party program to change D: to A: then use one of those programs specialized in moving content from a drive to another one, you move the content of C: drive to the A: drive then you can just change the name of C: to D: or any other letter
Quick question why theres no other way to change letter? also why my hard drive dont let me erase all partitions? like dont let me install in the 18tb partition only in the 2 tb partition like why?
I used this before and it was useful when some softwares like old adobe ones wouldnt let me install it onto another drive so I made my bigger hdd into C and my windows into Y i did this and it was alright.
If you're looking for ideas of tutorial videos, like you do so well. Maybe a video on how to rename your User "name" folder under the Users folder. Even though you can do it as the owner, it doesn't rename the actual folder under the user folder. Keep up the great videos. Thanks.
Can you use another character besides a letter? No reason for asking other than curiosity, and if so, would this add a layer of security from virus attacks? Since they would be looking for "C" based file systems.....?
It is possible to mount secondary drives to wacky things like 1, $, or !. It's not advisable, since Windows explorer doesn't recognize them. The system drive however, will fail to boot if you try to install Windows to something other than a letter.
My assumption was that, even in Win10+, it was _intended_ to be hardcoded (for backward compatibility reasons) that C: _must_ be the OS drive, A: and B: are reserved for floppy drives (good luck finding one these days), D: _must_ be either a CD or DVD drive or a mounted .iso file (I play a lot of older games that have CD-required DRM, and they won't run unless the disc-in-drive is mounted to D:, or I've created an iso of the CD, reassigned the physical drive to a different letter, and powershelled Mount-DiskImage to have the iso mount to D:...), and E: through Z: could be whatever you want them to be. (I believe X: is also a system-reserved mount point, but who would fill up E: through W: and _need_ X:?)
Has science gone too far?
Yep
Tooo Far 🏎️
yeeep
Bro I Am From Pakistan Make A Video On How To Make Windows Into Macbook In Cloest Look
Yeah.
I would advise app makers to use the environment variable %homedrive%:\ instead of C:\
Yeah, 1st thing I thought of is how most apps will have to be tweaked during install
But that makes too much sense!
Isn't that the %ProgramFiles% variable the same?
@@Energobytes That points to %homedrive%:\Program Files\. Some programs may create a folder inside %homedrive%:\, like MinGW is %homedrive%:\msys64
btw it might make more sense for %systemdrive%:\
I am a software developer, and most of my apps use predefined path locations(since it's more convenient). But as soon as I watched this video, I rushed to quickly change all my libraries to work with %systemdrive% instead
Nice
it's never a good idea to use absolute paths
Well... I suggest to let the user install it on any path and use system varibles for windows and programfiles folder. In an industrial enviroment usually we install everything with default setting because we know that most industrial software was never properly tested.... Many of them does not have a software tester and never heard of such.
@D Tibor I set up my apps to work wherever they are (as long as they have all the required Dlls which are installed automatically), the default path being %programfiles%. And their installer allows for custom paths.
The primary issue I found after watching this video was that when I wanted to get the program data, I would just use "C:\Users\" + Username + "\Appdata". And a few other functions that worked with paths had this issue.
Now I have a function that checks for 2 % simbols and replaces it with its respective enviroment path variabile. Same for shell: paths.
Not sure why you needed to watch this video - bunch of people have Windows on disc D - that's easy to achieve via Windows setup itself.
U can always make a small C drive and fill it up with symbolic links to the A drive. That way the programs using C drive by default will be redirected to A
Just do subst C: A:\ to redirect the C drive to the A drive
I think you can also mount the drive as both A: and C: at the same time
That a really genius idea! :D
Not sure, though, how it would deal with the space.
As I understand, when working with symbolic links, the space is taken from the destination (aka A drive).
This could potentially bypass some malware also that might be hard coded to use C: or assume the O/S is there.
👍
But that again can easily be bypassed if they use the environment variable %homedrive% or %systemdrive% instead of C:\
I think enderman made a video in which he showed that any Unicode Charakter is valid as a drive letter in Windows. Would be interesting to see if you can install Windows to a drive thats called 1: or something...
The Video is called "Weird drive letters in Windows"
Interesting
@@ThioJoe wait, can colon be a letter?
::/
Enderman also removed the driver letter
I opened the comments section just to see if someone said ahout Enderman's video, i don't remember but i think he used Linux and it is mindblowing the thing he did.
There are also special versions of Windows where the default letter for the installation volume is A.
Back in the MS-DOS days, the most popular series of PCs in Japan was NEC's PC-9800 series of PCs. These computers were not compatible with standard MS-DOS and had a special version of DOS that was compatible with those computets, but where the boot drive would always be the A drive (so it didn't matter if you installed DOS on a hard drive or if you booted from a floppy disk, the boot drive was always A). Eventually, versions of Windows would be ported to PC-9800 series computers, and the PC-9800 editions of Windows would also by default use A as the letter for the installation volume
that's a very interesting PC-98 fact...
Thats Interesting
Well now I have another idea of how I can confuse my friends. First I made it look like my computer somehow "downgraded" from Windows 10 to 7 (it was a windows 7 vm that was in full screen mode that I made for fun). Now I can't imagine how they'll react to not seeing a different drive letter on a vm.
Now, what happens if you plug a floppy drive into a Windows machine thats installed to a:? Will it automaticly show up as the B: drive?
Probably
@@ThioJoe ok it seems you dont have to use the remove on the diskpart. just the changing of the mounted thing in the mounted hive.
Yes. Tried it in my machine and indeed it shows up as B.
If B is already taken as well, then it will just take the next letter of the alphabet available like anything else does. Yes, that includes C: if it happens to be an unassigned drive letter.
A fun fact is that most viruses are hardcoded to use C: drive as System, so if you do that stuff, you will get fewer problems with viruses
I wouldn't rely on it tbf.
Hey... how do you know that?
@@gammaboost
Just read the script attached with those virus files😂
@@gammaboostthey don't, they are just basing it on the fact that it's common for most programs to incorrectly do it that way and viruses are just programs that you don't want running
yea but nothing else works
This would be an interesting experiment to see how much hard coding of windows path programs have done. Also some virus may not work if it is hard coded to assume c drive.
Good video Thio, I didn't know that was possible! Btw can you make a video of "What if you eject and delete the ENTIRE C: drive?", It would be hella cool
How would you 'eject' a hard disk? Do you mean just pull it out while its running? You'd just get a blue screen or the PC would lock up. Fail to see how that would be 'cool'.
You copied me
Desktop background go black.
Only recycle bin icon shows up
Only programs loaded in the ram work
Error message do not display text
When you restart windows 11 it will fix itself.
Do not know what happens if you delete it tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just search that on youtube, you will find a whole bunch of videos doing it and the best one is from Enderman channel .
@@mackie219 I didn't and I didn't even saw your comment
Thanks I’ve always wanted to have my system installed on a floppy drive
Finally a good tutorial thats not outdated
@@catcanhack I tried using Linux but it's too manual for my preference.
(Ubuntu, Arch and some of its forks)
No one:
Not a single sole:
Literally not human ever:
ThioJoe: Today I'm going to show you how to change your C: Drive to another letter
🤣
I had WinNT on D: a long while ago. Win98 on C: (because of an early MP3-player that needed Win98 to be loaded through a parallel port, which couldnt'd be done in NT).
When I removed C: a bit later, I ended up with D: for the OS, and E: for the data. I had a virtual C: mounted somewhere on D:, so programs that insisted on C: did even work...
The installer for XP and earlier used the MS-DOS rules for assigning drive letters. So if you tried to install XP on, for example, a logical drive in an extended partition, you’d end up with it installed on D: or E:. Only in Vista did they start using the selected install partition as C: no matter what.
If your windows drive isn't your only drive, than simply set another drive to drive letter C and problematic programs will just install there.
I once accidentally set the system driver letter to E while cloning a drive to an ssd. It booted after some registry edits. many apps failed to run so I added the C as a 2nd letter for the osdisk and it was fine.
What a time to come across this vid. I'm at the moment using the free version of 'AOMEI' Partition Assistant' (Standard Edition.) I'm a bit blown away by it. One of the options is to 'letter' the partitions. A-Z is available and takes about 5 seconds. I'd suggest downloading it just for a look.
Back when Windows was a graphical shell running on DOS I always installed DOS on C and Windows on D. It just seemed to run better and it kept the two operating systems separate.
Back in the 1990's playing around I figured out how to change the drive letter in Windows, they thought to myself this probably isn't a good idea - and it wasn't.
You can't make a simple user that has administrator permissions without being an actual administrator
Back in the day, the A and B drives were for the two floppy (the real kind) drives were assigned to them by default as they came before hard drives (IIRC). So by default, the C drive then represented the primary hard drive going forward and as an industry, everyone stayed with that for compatibility.
He made a video about that.
I'm fine with it using C: as the system drive, but I would still want to use A: and B: as USB drives.
You can, you just have to manually assign those drives to A: and B: in disk management, as Windows will outright refuse to assign anything to A or B unless they are the only letters left (or the device is a floppy drive).
I have understood the principle of how to change the "drive path", I have more or less been familiar with it for a very long time.
"But" on the other hand, I wonder if it is possible to create an own drive path, let me explain, and by that I don't mean the main disk where the operating system is located, but rather the other disks.
-
Let's say I have a hard drive that has driver path F:\
and is not tied to the main disk, pone that I would like to get it to the following execution 10:\ is this possible ?
-
Because as I understand it, disk driver's path's are limited to the alphabet which means that I can only use A:\ to Z:\ , after this it is not possible to folder network additional disks, of which I ask this question if it is possible to use "numbers" instead of letters. Is it possible that you understand my complicated question? :)
I changed disk letter to another with some utility which replace letter in registry. But it works only in clean system.
when it comes to windows ,honestly you are the very best, hands down..please keep this stuff up because it is great to know these things. thank you
Fun fact: you can install windows to any directory on C volume by manually applying the image (even C:\con)
What if you set it to Z instead?
Numbers overflow and loop around but I don't know about letters
Yes, you can set it to Z. Or any letter of the alphabet.
3:34 (idk if you know this) but pro tip, to save time instead of doing "list volume" or "list partition", do "lis vol", or "lis par", it still works, and saves time, this applies to other commands in diskpart
I can confirm that adobe lightroom shows A: drive with the latest version of Lightroom. I have the letter A set to my ssd which has my lr catalog and all the photos.
Lightroom or Lightroom Classic? The screenshot shows a Lightroom Classic problem
@@raulgalets Lightroom Classic
@@ridethefog I see. nice to see it is fixed
hah, always fun to do those kind of work arounds, love em.
What happened to the ai voice translations? I watch all videos in English but still it was fun to change the audio on your videos
Maybe you can use the subst command for the programs that need the c drive
IF I would ever install Window$ again I'd put it on W: XD
@ThioJoe is it possible to download windows 11 on an unsupported pc that is over 6 years?
Thanx for the video. When I installed Win 11 on a second partition it haves it's self drive i: rather than drive C:
I'd love to know how it can happen that bcdedit does not show the "correct" drive letter if you did *not* resize or move the partition. Also, I'd like to know what happens if you do *not* fix that (does it boot into recovery and change the letter back to C:?) In the BCD file, usually (at least when doing a clean install) there is not stored any drive letters, but instead partition IDs and partition offsets, and bcdedit will convert to the actual drive letter once you view it (you can test this by booting WinPE (or Windows Setup), change drive letters (they won't persist across reboot) and look at bcdedit and the drive letters will appear differently.
But yes, I did not know this method, but like it better than running X:\sources\setup from inside an already installed Windows (which, up to at least Win10, also results into a changed drive letter). I often have to edit DosDevices when cloning your disk to a different media type/size, so I understand why this works.
I also fear that these kind of hacks might not survive a version upgrade (or cause problems during settings migration). But for a nice test machine (or some "Windows To Go"), I'd totally go for it.
I have a question: “what would happen if you plug in so many USBs/devices that it surpasses the “Z:” Drive.”
“How would windows react if all drive letters are currently in use and you try to add another USB/device?”
If all letters are full windows simply won't assign a drive letter but the disk will show in disk manager. Where you will need to assign a mount point to access it... Say C:/ThisFolderIsUSB/ Anything on that folder would save to the drive that doesn't have the letter. So you can technically have infinite drives as mount points.
Enderman tried this i believe. It just doesn't give it a letter
If you use C: though Z:, Windows will use A and B next.
If you have NO letters left, Windows simply will leave the next device unassigned.
If you have that many storage devices you could also go the Linux/MacOS route of assigning them to folders instead of letters. This is fully supported by Windows, though the tool does note that it could cause some bugs due to poorly programmed apps.
I'm gonna try this the next time I install Windows 10 as a comeback to Windows.
Edit: I don't know whether I can install Windows 11 on my laptop, because the operating system wants a TPM 2.0 chip in that. Another thing, the Windows 11 ISO image is really large actually. I'll just install Windows 11 and try this anyway.
lol i got a prebuilt from cyberpower pc and windows was on the d drive
I just installed Windows Vista on the second partition with Windows XP on the first, using Windows XP. Then restarted to Windows Vista. And... The system drive was F:\ like this drive in Windows XP for some reason. Then I could just delete Windows XP partition :)
The official way of doing this is using an unattended install. The unattened install script allows you to setup all the drive letters of your partiion. It requires that you repartition the dtive in the unattended setup so is not suitable for everyone. There is a website that will generate an unattended script file that you place on a windows install usb stick which means the drive will auto install windows erasing everything on any machine that boots it so you need to be extra careful with a usb stick configured for unattended install
That doesn't work with A: and B:, but it will work with D: though Z:
Unattented install scripts will error out and fail if A or B is selected as the drive letter.
I use A: to mount a removable drive and B: to mount a network drive.
Back in the pre-Vista days, I normally put Windows on anything BUT the C: drive. It was always interesting to see which programs had hysterics when not finding C:\Windows or whatever. (I also renamed "Program Files" to "Programs" and "Documents and Settings" to "Users" cuz the original names bothered me.)
There are very common-sense reasons for doing this: Anybody who wants to install multiple OSs for a multi-boot system needs it. I have a Win7 partition that I'm still rockin', but decided too many devs have moved to the spyware-laden 11. Yet, installing it from a USB kept insisting on calling the drive it was on "C:". This hack works, and allowed me to install on E:. Working on Win11 22H2. Some software manufacturer. How many OSs in history made you get an expensive Server edition in order to install anywhere else than C:??? Epic hack, for those who need it, ThioJoe!
When I done I got a 7B BSOD (Windows 7 in a VM)
Nothing in windows should ever directly reference the c drive and nothing in win itself does. That's not why it only works that early, that has to do with a and b being used for special purposes and are therefor busy after first boot. Any other drive letter is super simple to change to after boot. There's just lots of poorly coded programs that reference c: rather than use env var.
I know how to do it by making another partition and then getting the windows.iso going into sources custom and then install it to there
Been there done that (ish), one of my x-wifes computers were divided to an extremely small C: and a huge D: "for data" as the support said, however there were no room to install programs to C, so I had to try to D:, and run into the same kind of problems as adobe lightroom. Don't actually recall which program, but I gave up and wiped, clean installed onto all disc is C:
Haha, the restricted thing has been unrestrict-i-fied!
Don't forget to clean up your prefect and caches.
I was wandering if you can do more than 1 letter
Hey guys and ThioJoe, I use my PC mainly for gaming (both native games and emulators), has Windows 11 reached a point where I should upgrade to it instead of sticking to 10 until the end of its support ?
Btw, I really like videos like this where you show us how to do stuff that normally we wouldn't be able to do just to goof around.
Personally, I like Windows 11 a lot more than Windows 10, so I would advise you to update. But that's your decision and you should probably first wait for others to respond
they added more features to notepad and right click menus are different D:
havent really had an issue with anything else though
What virtual machine system do you use?
I remember I have done that on Windows 10 in 2016 while I was installing it on my main laptop lol
You should make a video explaining the difference between Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Pro N(Eu edition)
The EU forced MS to break Windows. N is the first letter of NFG. No media players, no cell phone connectivity, just the EU doing what the EU does best: effing with consumers. And you wonder why the U.K. left?
@@dhjohns1956 Is that a good thing?
Sorry I'm not a English guy, so double meaning words like "effing" confuse me.
@@EnejJohhem Well I do not want to get blocked but effing means fucking, and no it is not good.
Welcome to 1984.... Unfortunately Been there... lol Tandy 1000 and Comodore 64... You member??? I member...
Isn't this possible by simply installing windows to an existing empty partition that already assigned with alternate letter? because i'm sure when I did that in the past, it kept the original drive letter that I assigned to that partition. Which in this case was not "C".
Yes, if you launch the Installer from an existing install the drive letter will be whatever it was in the original install.
"You are always vulnerale to viruses". Windows on A letter which would make the path the virus targets change and so would make a lot of scripts unvalid:
I wanted to try it after installing windows in a vm (tried with 7 because I had it ready) and it broke a lot of stuff (can't even open explorer)
I always thought the C: icon looked like a smily face
Nobody said it was impossible...the reason that windows or OS installation's default to the letter "C" was because "A" and "B" were taken up by FDD's, most notably the 5.25" and then the 3.5"...
Because those basically don't exist anymore, unless you're running systems that still support them, you can re-letter the OS drive to any of the 26 letters of the alphabet, should you desire to do so...
I have done this by accident because sometimes I install Windows from inside Windows via /sources/setup.exe. Windows just sets up with the drive letter as mounted on the running system. So when I need to install Windows to a partrition, set as D:, it will setup as D:
This has sometimes caused problems, and sometimes just been cool to see. I really advise program makers to install to %systemdrive% instead of C:\
many programs will assume windows drive is letter C. also (may not really matter) many tutorials and instructions assume windows drive c. They're hard coded for C:\ drive instead of relying on environment variables... those silly variables what do they know. they think they're better than me? nu-uh... I'm better than me.
The diskpart and bcdedit steps can be skipped; changing the drive letter in Windows PE is pointless and drive letters aren't stored in the BCD.
I was able to do this on Windows 7 by running the installer on an existing windows installation and targetting an already formatted ntfs partition. But this doesn't work with the windows 10 installer anymore
I did the same thing with Windows 10 once and ended up with the new install coming up as D. At least I tihnk it was 10. It might have been 7.
This path "mounted devices" on registry was helpfull when my cloned (dd tool used ) install didnt want to go to desktop ( black screen only loading icon stuck) . the solution was to erase all things inside there with remote registry , and re-create an EFi folder .
So looks like its already kind of answered in the comments. But would there be any security benefit to this? As in you download malicious software.. but because you have an A drive.. its like wtf?. Lol
If I ever use a Windows VM it could be fun to make the drive letter X: for coolness.
Lets goooo he chose 2
That's an awful damn big directory/file/ISO in that little floppy disk drive. :)
So basically, cool, but not worth it. Also, I found out the reason why is because A and B are floppy drives.
You can also change the icon to be a 5 1/4 floppy while at it. 😏
You madman! You are messing with the natural order of things! I hope you understand the powers that you are disrupting when reality starts melting and dimensions collapsing! 🤣
I didn't know anybody thought it was impossible rather than impractical due to dev laziness.
what if you use a 3rd party program to change D: to A: then use one of those programs specialized in moving content from a drive to another one, you move the content of C: drive to the A: drive then you can just change the name of C: to D: or any other letter
Quick question why theres no other way to change letter? also why my hard drive dont let me erase all partitions? like dont let me install in the 18tb partition only in the 2 tb partition like why?
I used this before and it was useful when some softwares like old adobe ones wouldnt let me install it onto another drive so I made my bigger hdd into C and my windows into Y i did this and it was alright.
This is how we can make the most cursed windows?!?!?!?! (Joke)
Way back in the day I did a brute force change. Think I did it later with some version during setup.
A: should be a norm today for the main OS partition since almost nobody have floppy disk readers
If you're looking for ideas of tutorial videos, like you do so well. Maybe a video on how to rename your User "name" folder under the Users folder. Even though you can do it as the owner, it doesn't rename the actual folder under the user folder. Keep up the great videos. Thanks.
Can you use another character besides a letter? No reason for asking other than curiosity, and if so, would this add a layer of security from virus attacks? Since they would be looking for "C" based file systems.....?
No
It is possible to mount secondary drives to wacky things like 1, $, or !. It's not advisable, since Windows explorer doesn't recognize them.
The system drive however, will fail to boot if you try to install Windows to something other than a letter.
I once (somewhere near 15 years ago) set up server on the system drive E: Didn't care about it much.
They said we couldn't do it! They said we shouldn't do! And we fid it anyways!
Can you do this on the current installation:insert media>boot media>repair boot>cmd>registry editor >change name>restart
Yes i was waiting so long
You can't read minds bruh? Obviously the guy is on another level for the setting a letter part.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." ~some dude
@thiojoe how to fix not enough memory in system to boot virtual machi although my pc is 8gb of r.a.m
If it doesn't work, maybe this exists. Make the c drive small and have a redirect to the ? drive and it will work if it exists to do that.
Hold up, what if you formatted a SB or SD card as C: then insert it into regular pc?
sure would be a shame if every modern program didn't ask you where to install and just assumed to go to C:
just open disk management, u can change drive letter thru there.
Oh yea? Have you tried it?
@@ThioJoe nvm, youre right, it does not work
I did this recently by accident and I had to reload windows entirely 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️
My assumption was that, even in Win10+, it was _intended_ to be hardcoded (for backward compatibility reasons) that C: _must_ be the OS drive, A: and B: are reserved for floppy drives (good luck finding one these days), D: _must_ be either a CD or DVD drive or a mounted .iso file (I play a lot of older games that have CD-required DRM, and they won't run unless the disc-in-drive is mounted to D:, or I've created an iso of the CD, reassigned the physical drive to a different letter, and powershelled Mount-DiskImage to have the iso mount to D:...), and E: through Z: could be whatever you want them to be. (I believe X: is also a system-reserved mount point, but who would fill up E: through W: and _need_ X:?)
I know what vm service u use and it's always downloaded. It's called hyperv
I remember once when I installed Windows XP on an old laptop, it for some reason installed it to D:\