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During my failed attempt to use Norton Ghost to clone my boot drive, the original disk letter assignments were changed and now Windows 7 can not find my files. The original disk (which I am still using) has a boot/recovery partition assigned as D: and the main partition with all docs/programs/etc. was C:. During the attempted cloning of the new drive, the main partition of the original drive was reassigned to K:, so now Windows 7 can not find it. How can I correct the letter assignment problem?

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Open the start menu, right click 'Computer', and click 'Manage'. Wait for a moment while the Microsoft Management Console starts.

In the left pane of the MMC, select 'Storage' > 'Disk Management'. In the lower middle pane, you should see your hard drive (probably Disk 0) with a bar chart representing its partitions. Right click a partition and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'. Select the entry with the current letter and press Modify, in the box that opens you'll be able to select a new drive letter.

The old drive letter will continue to work as well as the new one until you restart (to prevent file handles currently open becoming invalid).

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With only the original drive installed, Windows would not open the desktop/start button/etc. I reconnected the new disk with the copy of the main partition (now called C:) and it booted completely with both disks installed. So, I've followed your instructions to rename the new drive to M: and am trying to rename the old drive's partition to C:. However, Disk Management says, "The parameter is incorrect." Any ideas? – CoryanDesign Jun 8 '11 at 4:36
The current state of things is: Old drive has D: (boot partition), K: (original program/data files) and the New drive has M: (a clone of the old disks program and data files). – CoryanDesign Jun 8 '11 at 4:38
On a machine I am trying, I am also getting "The parameter is incorrect" when trying to change the letter of the active partition. I suspect that this is a failure to remap the active partition, although I thought this worked. More research shows that people seem to think this is impossible... but I am 100% sure I have done it before. Take a look at this MSKB: support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188#top . Absolutely do perform a backup beforehand. – jcrawfordor Jun 8 '11 at 6:45
jcrawfordor, thanks for your help. It seems that while trying to continue with the Ghost cloning process, the computer has, at some point, renamed the partitions again and the C: has been returned to normal. So, problem solved...now back to trying to get this new drive cloned and installed. Thanks. – CoryanDesign Jun 8 '11 at 13:48
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