xp home installation or setup problem

[zibbledabbit]

1st time builder in need of (lots of) help...

I just completed building my 1st system and installed xp home sp2. System is Athlon 64 3200 (winchester) on MSI Neo2 Platinum mobo, Hitachi 250Gb Sata HD, NEC 3520A optical, 1gig Mushkin 3200, XFX 6600GT video, Mitsumi floppy/card readercombo.

Now I have several issues:

1. In Windows, HDD connected to sata 1 on mobo shows up as Drive "F"?. Bios lists NEC DVD as IDE primary master and HDD as IDE Third Master. Hard drive boot priority is set to HDD. Properties shows HDD location as location 0 (Primary ATA Channel). I also have a "Safely remove hardware" icon in my task bar that refers to the HDD. HDD policies shows Optimize for performance ticked so write caching is enabled, so can I or should I check optimize for quick removal instead, which disables caching?

2. NEC optical is connected to primary IDE, jumper set to Master (right?wrong?)

3. Floppy is recognized, but not card readers in it (connected to USB header).

So, what the h*** am I doing wrong? Go ahead and beat me up, as needed. Thanks in advance for your help.

Dennis

 

[MrChad]

To answer your first question, XP setup is notorious for screwing up drive letters when you install on drives on non-default controllers. The only way to get it to set as C: is to disconnect your IDE drives and reformat. Reconnect the IDE drives when you are done.

 

[zibbledabbit]

MrChad,

Thanks for the response. THe only IDE drive in my system is the NEC DVD. If I reformat the sata drive (the only HDD in the system), then don't I need to reinstall XP? If true, then how would I do that if the optical drive is disconnected? I'm wondering if jumpering the optical drive to slave when re-installing XP would fix the drive lettering thing (and then have the optical drive continue to work). There's no way to set jumpers on the sata drive of course, since they don't exist. I do appreciate your help.

Dennis

 

[zibbledabbit]

FYI, I resolved my problem after initial XP install of the HDD being assigned as F:

After determining that the card readers were being assigned drive letters C: and D:, I disconnected them and did a reinstall (twice). The first re-install I chose to do a repair based on the fact that setup reported I already had O/S installed on " C: ". So I did the repair and no joy; Windows still indicated HDD as drive F. Re-install #2, I deleted existing partition and did a complete new install. Now I have a C: drive... (and have memorized my product key).

Reconnecting the card reader to USB headers correctly added them as E:, F:

So I guess the only question I have left at this time is should I disable write caching on the HDD, or is that the only way to get rid of the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the task bar? pros/cons?

Thanks,

Dennis