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#1
Can I change my Windows drive J: to C: without too much of a hassle?
Can you change the system partition (including Windows & programs) from J: to C: without a lot of hassle?
Let me explain:
My mom's PC was old and still running on Windows XP. Years ago she had a crash and someone restored her PC. Because of the restoration everything was relocated to the J: partition. Her J: partition acts like a normal C: partition, but I want to give it a go correcting it.
I managed the following; I cloned her old harddisk (with Clonezilla) to a new harddisk and installed it in a new PC. From there I removed a bunch of old programs and cleaned it up (quite) a bit. After that I cloned the contents to a SSD. And the (new) PC booted into Windows XP (without issues), something which I didn't expect to quite honest (ofcourse a lot of drivers missing, but no problem).
Anyways from there I upgraded to Vista > Windows 7 > Windows 10, while keeping all of her original programs and settings. Normally I would do a complete install, but she has many "old" programs which aren't being sold anymore and / or she didn't save the license information / serials for those programs.
Her PC is now running fine (and much better) on Windows 10 + SSD. I also installed a harddisk mainly for pictures and backups. Installing the harddisk was kind of a pain. After installing it, the PC wouldn't boot anymore into Windows 10. After spending several days on this, I finally discovered that the registry was messed up and had to load the registry remotely (thanks to Hirens Bootcd) and correct everything from C: to J: (as it originally was on her PC). I think because I added the harddisk it made some registry changes and causing it not to boot anymore. Anyways, long story short, it's working now again.
So now I am trying to make her (new) PC a bit normal by changing her current Windows partition from J: to C:.
I don't know if this is possible and that I maybe should leave it as it is, as it's working now. Also she is used to the fact that J: is her default partition. But, if it's possible, it's something I would consider doing. But I would like to know what the professionals in here think of this.
(sorry for my long story, but wanted to be as detailed as possible)
If it's too much of a hassle or to dangerous (resulting non-booting or non-starting programs, due to drive letter change, just say so, I will leave it as it is.