When you install a second OS on a computer it depends on how you install it
as to the drive lettering. If you booted the machine with the installation
media then the drive letters will not agree. If you start the second OS
installation from the desktop of the first they will agree.

Why are you trying to swap the OS's in the first place? Depending on what
you are trying to do, that may not be necessary.

"On the Bridge" <OntheBridge@1701.com> wrote in message
news:47b5d865$1@newsgate.x-privat.org...
> Hello, Timothy, you seem you know very well what you are talking about..
> thanks...
>
> I want to ask you another detail... Vista somehow "sees" the second
> partition as C because thats where its installed
> and the first partition with XP, it sees as D,
>
> and of course XP that is the first OS sees its own parition as C and the
> Vista one as D
>
> is there a way, after I ghost the XP image from the first partition and
> put it on to the second parition for it to call the second partition
> C and the first partition (that will now have vista) as D?
> This is the behaviour of vista now.. so can this same behavior be done on
> XP?
>
> Sorry if this is kinda confusing.. I hope I expressed this question well
> enough
>
>
> "Timothy Daniels" <NoSpam@SpamMeNot.com> wrote in message
> news:OaxFnx$bIHA.4040@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> "Bob Harris" wrote:
>>> Be aware that there are very many entires in the registry of XP and
>>> separately in the registry for Vista that point to a drive location,
>>> such as C:\...\...\. If you move the contents of the paritions in a way
>>> that changes the drive letters, say C:\ to D:\, then one or both will
>>> not work.
>>
>>
>> At least for XP that is not true - probably not true for Vista as
>> well.
>> What gets invalidated is the menu for the boot loader. For XP, this
>> menu is in the boot.ini file in which "partition()" is the parameter
>> which
>> refers to the no. of the partition in which the OS resides, and "rdisk()"
>> is the parameter which designates the HD where that partition is.
>>
>> Evidence that the letter name of the partition that the drive was
>> installed on does NOT matter is that I can clone a bootable XP from
>> any partition on any HD in my PC to any other partition on any other
>> HD in my PC, and as long as the entries in the boot menu that is in use
>> are correct, that cloned XP can be loaded and run exactly as its "parent"
>> XP. The letter name of the RUNNING XP clone will probably be
>> different from that of its "parent" XP, but that will not at be a
>> problem.
>> The only problem that can occur involving partition letter names is if
>> the
>> USER creates shortcuts which involve letter names to other partitions,
>> since those letter names will not be valid in the new partition
>> arrangement.
>>
>> *TimDaniels*
>>
>