Can you install XP without C: present?

[NavJitsU4]

Anyone know a way around this?

I want to install XP on anything but C: but when I partition the drive as anything other than C: it still creates a C: partition to put the mbr on it.

is this possible?

 

[Smilin]

You're mixing up some terminology here.

Some rules:
The drive that bios points to has to have an MBR on it.
There must be at least one partition on that drive.
That partition must have ntldr on it.
That partition does not have to have any particular drive letter at all.
The rest of the OS can be on any partition on any drive and that partition can have any drive letter assigned to it.

During setup you do not have direct control over the drive letter given to your boot drive. You only have indirect based on what partitions/drives exist. See:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/234048

If you use setup to create a couple partitions then install onto the second one you'll have your OS on D:. Once setup is complete, just change the drive letter on C: to whatever you want.

If you want to get rid of the partition C: altogether activate D:, put an MBR on the drive if needed, copy ntldr and ntdetect over, then update boot.ini.

 

[Raduque]

"C: must not exist"

I'll never understand why people do things with computers.


Once you get it installed to the whatever: drive, you can use disk manager to remove the drive letter from the c: drive. It'll still be bootable and such, but nobody will be able to access it.

 

[Adam8281]

I wonder if Arcadio has an 'H' drive?

Posting this kind of stuff is OS is likely to result in your taking some time off.
bsobel

 

[MTDEW]

you can just create two partions when booting from the xp cd.
Install xp on the partition thats not c:

Then once at desktop you can change the c drive letter to any available

Caution though:
If you're having trouble understaing partitions and drive letters already, then you may have trouble installing software since some default their install path to c:\program files\xxx.

So you'll have to be aware of this and be sure to change any software install path to the crorrect drive.

This would be easier if you'd explain why you dont want a c: drive in the first place.