After resizing partitions, W7 starts from wrong Drive Letter

[RealBlackStuff]

I resized partitions on my hard drive, using GPARTED:
Originally:................... After resizing:
C: XP .......... - 15GB - 15GB - C: XP
D: Programs .. - 56GB - 20GB - D: Programs .... smaller, same start-location
E: Data ........ - 48GB - 48GB - F: Data .......... same size, moved to Left, Drive letter changed from E to F
F: W7 .......... - 55GB - 91GB - E: Windows7 ... enlarged, moved to Left, Drive letter changed from F to E

The bootmenu has a choice of XP and W7.
When I select XP, it boots from C: and all the Drive Letters remain C-D-E-F with correct names/content

When I select W7, it now boots from E: with proper W7 Pro screen, then says Welcome, followed by Preparing Desktop.
From there on it hangs and nothing further happens.
When I press Ctrl-Alt-Del I can start the Task Manager, and start a New Task, such as Explorer or CMD-box.
When I start Explorer, it brings the Desktop Icons, but only standard icons, not the proper program icons.
None of those programs work, claiming their (E:) path is wrong (which is correct, because their path points to F:).
I have done three Disk Repairs from the official genuine W7 DVD, nothing gained.
Using programs like Bootice, EasyBCD, DISKPART and Partition Wizard don't help either, no matter where I run them from.

Any help with how I can change those Drive letters will be greatly appreciated.

[GomJabbar]

Could try booting from a XP DVD and using diskpart to change the drive letters? I'm a little rusty on diskpart, but I know Windows does not always read partition information correctly when the disk was partitioned with non-windows partitioning software. I'm not sure W7 has diskpart, as it has other tools available.

[RealBlackStuff]

I tried DISKPART both from XP and from the borked W7, doesn't work unfortunately.
Not allowed to change drive letter from E to F while in W7.
No need to change drive letter while in XP (because it shows correct F there already...)

[dr_st]

Try loading the Win7 registry from WinXP, and changing the driver letter assignments under HKLM\System\MountedDevices (look at the \DosDevices\X: keys where X is the drive letter).

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=105728

It happened to me with XP once (after cloning a drive). Never happened with Vista/7, but who knows what thoughts run around in the mind of Windows...

[RealBlackStuff]

The saga continues.
Since my 'old' W7 partition was still fully intact, I used Clonezilla (from a bootabler CD) to copy the whole W7 onto a new SSD.
Then I renamed the original W7 partition to W7-OLD, and the new, cloned W7 keeps the name WINDOWS7.
Booted into XP and renamed:
E:Data to W:Data and
F:W7-OLD to P:W7-OLD

Then I rebooted and tried W7 again, and Oh, Miracle! It worked all of a sudden!
Going into W7 DiskManagement, I noticed the following changes, without me doing anything other than cloning:
Should be: ....- IS:
C: XP .......... - C: XP
D: Programs .. - D: Programs
W: Data ....... - W: Data
P: W7-OLD.... - E: W7-OLD (on the 'old' HD partition)
N/A -----> new - F: WINDOWS7 (on the new SSD)

Thanks to dr_st I found that the Registry DosDevices under WINDOWS7 are mostly correct, except:
W: has the Data from E:
E: has the Data from P:
WTF?

I haven't checked BCD yet, but I bet that still points to the E-drive (W7-OLD), but since everything there points to
the (now existing) new F:WINDOWS7, it somehow works.

Needs more work, but not right now!
I'm glad I got it going so far...