How to Fix Wrong Drive Letters in Windows 8.1/10

This guide will teach you how to fix wrong assigned drive letters in a Windows 8.1, 10 Installation.

Note: This is a temporary solution and it will reset the next time you boot into recovery. An update will include a more permanent solution.

After sysprepping my system, despite manually changing the drive letters, it didn’t stick. What does this mean? Any time I boot into the recovery environment, the letters get switched up. This is especially frustrating when trying to create a junction.

Boot into recovery. Hold SHIFT + Select Restart. You will be greeted with a screen that says Choose an option > Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > Command Prompt

In the command promp, type only the words shown in italics

Diskpart #This will open up Diskpart

List Vol #This command will list all the volumes.

Example: Volume 1 shows up as C (when in reality it is my secondary drive with 4TB, D) Volume 2 shows up as D (when in reality it should be C – SSD w/ 120GB). You will need to identify the correct drive letter. No media is typically the DVD drive (at least in my case). Labels will also be a huge help when identifying drives.

Select Vol 1 # This command will select the volume labeled as 1.

Remove # This command will remove the drive letter.

Select Vol 2 # This command will select the volume labeled as 2.

Remove

Select Vol 1

Assign Letter=D # This command will assign the letter D to Volume 1 (My secondary drive)

Select Vol 2

Assign Letter=C # This command will assign the letter C to Volume 2 (my main OS)

List Vol # We need to check that everything looks as it should.

Exit # This will exit DISKPART

Alternatively, you can close the command prompt if that’s all you were doing.

Check to make sure everything looks right. In the recovery environment, I close out of command prompt and select Continue. In my case, everything looks perfect.