SSD/HDD setup: HDD died, can't reinstall programs

[bullfrawg]

Hi y'all. I'd like to get some help.

I'm new to Windows 7, and never used Vista, just XP. I just built a new system with an 80GB SSD, and used an old hard drive for data. I relocated my "User" files to the HDD, and installed only the most essential stuff to the SSD -- Chrome and Starcraft 2. So I had Open Office and a few other things on the HDD.

Then the HDD quit working. So I replaced it.

But now when I try to re-install OpenOffice, it complains because drive F isn't there, which was the partition I had it installed on in the old drive. I expect I'll have problems with other software too.

Any fixes for that? Any other tips for recovering from a hard drive failure when using a small-SSD / large-HDD setup?

Of course I can always resort to erasing the SSD and re-installing Windows 7. That's not the end of the world since this is just a week-old setup.

(BTW, I also had problems that my User space had no "My Documents" folder, etc, since I had relocated it to the dead hard drive. I created a new temp admin account, deleted my account, created a new account of the same name, and deleted the temp. That mostly worked, except there's now some weird folder I can't access.)

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[SimMike2]

An 80GB drive can hold a lot more than just the OS. I would not be forcing regular office programs to install on a regular hard drive, as you will definitely miss out on the beauty of SSD speed. If you had a tiny 30GB or 40GB SSD, I can understand being concerned with conserving space, but an 80GB is adequate for most if not all of your programs. I say start installing all your programs to the default OS drive and see how much space you have left after you finish. I would be surprised if most average people, without a lot of games, barely get past half filling the drive.

 

[bullfrawg]

Thanks Mike -- I've already used half of the ssd just with the OS, starcraft, and drivers and such. I'll probably disable hibernation and get back much of that since the "sleep" function seems to work so well on this machine.

But the issue is, I can't install OpenOffice anywhere now. If I try to install it, the installer fails because it can't find drive F, which died. On the other hand, if I try to uninstall it, the uninstaller fails because it can't find drive F, which died. I'm not sure how to manually uninstall whatever vestiges of OpenOffice are in my OS, because I don't know enough about windows 7. Anyone know?

 

[Steltek]

Try running CCleaner to see what problems it locates, just be careful what you fix with it.

You ought to be able to manually delete the OpenOffice install folder from your system drive, then use CCleaner to delete OpenOffice from the list of installed programs. Whether this will fix your problem, though, I can't say.

Can you install Libre Office by any chance? If so, it is probably the way to go as OpenOffice is pretty much dead in the water at this point.

 

[bullfrawg]

Solved it with a silly-sounding tip from sevenforums.com. I had some unallocated space on my HDD, so I created a 100MB partition called F:. Then I uninstalled OpenOffice, which no longer complained. Seems that it doesn't complain because it can't find the files, but only because it can't find the drive where the files MIGHT be. Weird. Then I immediately reinstalled.

Thanks for the LibreOffice tip, Steltek. I'd missed that fork, or forgotten. I'll give it a shot. For others: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/...from-ooo-as-contributors-join-libreoffice.ars