Win XP install, wrong drive letter

[Prospector]

I just installed XP on a new WD 120gb HD set as master on primary ide cable with cd burner as slave. 30gb non-bootable HD is master with dvd/cdrom slave on secondary cable.
Booted from xp cdrom, partitioned and formated drive and then continued the install.

Boot drive is now F: and can't be changed. I was able to change all other drives, but why did xp not assign c: to my boot drive? and how can I fix it?

 

[IsOs]

I don't quite understand the question

 

[Prospector]

Most operating systems are installed on the c: drive. Especially when it is the only OS on the system.

 

[IsOs]

Now I can see the question, when I first saw the thread , it's blank.


Are you saying that when the BIOS boot up and identified the drives, your 120GB harddrive was found first? Can you tell us how the drives are listed by the BIOS?

I suggest that you disconnect the other drives, just leave your 120GB & a CD/DVD drive and reinstall Windows. Also, make sure you don't have any USB card readers or drives in the system.

Also, when it boot up make sure that the BIOS recognize your 120GB Harddrive as the Primary drive on the first channel.

 

[PrincessGuard]

If there are existing NTFS partitions, Win2k/XP setup will reassign them drive letters first. Only after it's taken care of all the existing drives will it assign a letter to your new installation.

Easiest way around this is to disconnect all other drives before installing. It is just a cosmetic issue though.

 

[Mrburns2007]

Right click on My Computer and choose manage and then choose disk management, you'll see how your hard drive is setup.

One little bug is that you need to create all your partitions in a row, first create P1 and P2 and P3, if you create P1 and then P3 and then P2 Windows will pick up on this and assign drive letters in the time they were created.

 

[Prospector]

I had to delete all partitions on the new drive, then reinstall xp. I disconnected secondary drives before the second install. I all came up correctly this time. Only one hour talking to Windoze tech support.

 

[Abzstrak]

reinstall, or change every instance in the registry from f to c.... reinstalling is much faster unless U can find a util to aid in the effort, but seeing as installing windows only takes about 10 minutes......

 

[Redviffer]

Same thing happened to me, but it's my 4th drive in the system, so installed as G:/ (C-D-E hard drives, F cd drive)

Anyway, I'll just leave it for now, no biggie, and I'll be upgrading it soon anyway and will fix it the next time I wipe & reinstall WinXP.

 

[MiamiJones]

Ya
how would I be able to change a drive of a boot dirve?
I want to change the letter

 

[Redviffer]

You can change any of the other drive's but not the bootable, unless you do that registry trick described by Abzstrak (don't know if this will work though).

Probably easier to just wipe and reload, remembering to disconnect all the other drives first.