C: drive is now an X: drive

[Trizmegistus]

Ran all steps to repair windows explore now my C: drive turned into an X: drive. I backed everything up have an image disk from last suday, doest work but i can see the image, it states drice notavailable; I started with step and folloed every direction to the T. (Alienware R6, Intel Core i7-7700 4.2 gigahertz)
Board - Alienware 07HV66 00
64Gb total RAM

16 Gb DIMM0 - 2 slots 16Gb in each for 32 Gb
16 Gb DIMM1 - 2 slots 16 Gb in each for 32 Gb
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
Sound blaster Z

Any suggestions? I will try anything at this point. I have the registry backups on an external hardrive, the registry backup will not run either. 

Please Help. Thank you very much

[Boggin]

I don't know why this has happened but have passed this onto my Support.

[Trizmegistus]

Thank you Windows 10 pro all updates
McAfee latest version all updates
Malwarebytes all updates
No games, I don’t go to any bad sites
I use the computer strictly for graphics

Thank you very much

(name removed by mod))

[jpm]

I removed your name and phone number - you shouldn't do that.

Ok. first there is absolutely nothing in the program at all that can change the boot drive.

If you are in windows It's hard to say why windows did this - but it did it prob because of the image you made OR that the original system had a x: backup partition.

but this is the fix
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/223188/how-to-restore-the-system-boot-drive-letter-in-windows

If you are in the dos window from the rovery enviromen t - the dribve letter assigment may be normal.

How are you getting to the dos window?

[Trizmegistus]

I cant get in to the registry. I get to the command prompt using F12, instead of F2. F12 comes up with Bios flass harddrive password a couple of other options, one of them is diagnostics, i hit diagnostics, and pause press advanced and then troubleshoot, and one of the options is command prompt. So i cant even acces windows. DOS is my only option, Im not real sure how to rename the X: drive back to C: when the C drive already exists, and the X drive info is really on the c: drive. My image disk is good i tried it on my old laptop. But i cannot boot with the image drive on my R6. Thank you

I removed your name and phone number - you shouldn't do that.

Ok. first there is absolutely nothing in the program at all that can change the boot drive.

If you are in windows It's hard to say why windows did this - but it did it prob because of the image you made OR that the original system had a x: backup partition.

but this is the fix
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/223188/how-to-restore-the-system-boot-drive-letter-in-windows

If you are in the dos window from the rovery enviromen t - the dribve letter assigment may be normal.

How are you getting to the dos window?

[Trizmegistus]

Sorry, i was working from my iPad. The computer starts and i hit F12 it takes me to A couple of options bios flash, hardrive password, not like F2 where you have the typical options. F12 has an option “diagnostics” i go there pause the diagnostics, hit advance optons and it gives you a list of options, one of them is the command prompt. I ran everything in safe mode, did a proper reset start, followed each step, my only question is when it came to repair environmental variables, and a couple other repairs on that step, that where it went to dos, and made the repairs. I have an external hard with my image on it, and my registry files are backed on my windows restore backups ext harddrive f: i am familiar with DOS, but i didn’t want to change any drive letters until i had more information. I have never used an X drive? I wonder if something triggered a virus, that McAfee or Malwarebytes missed. I thought the exact same thing how can this happen without human intervention. I know enough about computers to sometimes fix them & sometimes get in trouble. I have a minor in computer science when the language we learned Fortran & Cobalt. Im aging myself i was in the Air Force for 27 years & of course the system administrator every place i went. Well i’ll give it a try and see what happens, if push comes to shove i have a brand new harddrive they gave me, I'm not losing anything i have a backup every night for the typical library's. Thank god for external hard-drive’s. I also should have paid moe attention on what exactly was being repaired. As I i cannot figure out how a program can change your c: drive without human intervention. Just so many real weird .dll file in my wow 64 file. Is it possible for a virus to get through my security? The have it start up when you apply the fix?

Thank you so much for you time and advice. Great customer service.

[Boggin]

Yes, when you are in the cmd prompt in that mode it does show as x:\windows\system32> and it may well see the OS as being in D:

At the cmd prompt in that mode on mine, C:\ shows as System and D:\ shows as Windows but when I enter bcdedit |find "osdevice" at the X:\ prompt, it returns the partition letter as D:

I don't think a chkdsk d: /f or /r will do anything to resolve, but you could see what it reports.

At the x:\ cmd prompt type regedit.exe and regedt32.exe to see if you get access to the reg editors as in that article.

You can also try rstrui.exe to see if that will get you to your restore points, but given the state of your computer, using those could cause more problems.

If you want to check to see if an infection is the cause, create a Kaspersky Rescue Disk to see if that will boot up - it does seem to have some healing properties as well, but not sure if it will be able to revert the drives back to the way they were.

https://support.kaspersky.co.uk/viruses/krd2018