Instd Sata2 HD is E drive but I'd prefer C. how to do this?

[LehDan]

Heya,

I have:

Asus P4C800 Deluxe mainboard.
400W PSU with 2x SATA connectors.
XP Home OEM

+++

Yesterday I bought a new HD, a Samsung SATA2 500GB.

I basically want to scrap my current SATA1 HD because I've hammered it and it's on it's last legs, and replace it with this new drive.

I've hooked my new drive up to the motherboard via SATA cable and it's recognised as the third IDE master. (my DVD drive is primary master FYI)

After a full NTFS format I installed XP onto my new drive. The installation did not go smoothly - I got the BSOD and a random restart. Eventually though, the OS did install.

When I loaded up the new Xp installation I noticed that the new drive had installed as an E drive. I really need the drive letter to be C. Do you know how I would go about this?

Do I need to re-install? My hunch says yes, especially because of the bad installation I described. Will I need to go into the recovery console and format my drive? I dunno, I'm just tossing up ideas and also hoping to show I can use the recovery console if need be.

Any help much appreciated,

Thanks,

Ian

 

[wahnula]

Do I need to re-install?

Briefly, yes. you should place the SATA drive on the primary SATA channel and the DVD drive on IDE secondary. I had this happen to me due to a USB card reader grabbing C,D & E, during a recent build. My research led me to a dead end, and since you had a problematic install I would definitely advise reinstalling it. Who knows what else is hosed, it would not be great to find a kernel issue after you're deep into app installation.

Installation should be smooth and unremarkable, if it's not then find the problem before continuing, you'll be glad later. I've found that blue screens during OS install is usually hardware-related. Start with the bare minimum, 1 optical, 1 hard drive, 1 stick RAM etc.

There could also be a problem with the physical media, I have had scratched CDs cause install problems, sometimes fixed by simply copying the CD.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[wolluf]

Did you leave your old drive connected while you installed new? (you shouldn't). Generally XP only doesn't install on C: if there is already a C: drive - as Tony says, card readers have a habit of 'stealing' C: - but obviously existing hard drive with installation on would also. The optical drive shouldn't matter - other than it will push up another letter (hence E.

Just agreeing with Tony's comments about problems during install - you need to find out cause before using the system or you'll be in for ongoing trouble.

 

[LehDan]

Thanks a lot guys.

It's quite ironic that my PC was running great and by doing this I was aiming to prevent any drive problems! Now my usual drive is really messing up with problems like dead taskbar, buggy apps etc. Hehe oh well..

Actually I realised when it was too late, near the end of the install, that I had quite a few things connected (External USB HD, printer (strangely considered a mass storage device by xp), router and so on). So there was always plenty of conflict potential. Was daft of me.

Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure this wasn't in my boot device list before, but appeared after the problems:

MBA UNDI (Bus2 Slot5)

So I'll ned to look into that too.

I'll format, strip the system down to the minimum and install again like you say, with the DVD on secondary master. I could have it as an E drive if I really have to but it'll mess up project files and settings I have backed up, so that's last resort.

Ian

 

[wahnula]

You can rename drive letters at will after the install through disk management, just not the System volume. Good luck with your project.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[LehDan]

Yeah I tried that cheers Tony.

Well, this is me typing from my new C drive, wahey! Isn't life great when you get happy from such small things.

I removed all the unnecessary gear, switched the DVD to 2nd Master, formatted and installed again. This time round there were no errors during the install. I think it was probably my external HD that affected the lettering system.

Just installing XP, SP2 and all the windows updates inc. software updates - took about 5 gig of space. I really don't know what guys on dial-up do in these situations, updates must take forever.

Oh well, thanks a lot for all your help. See ya,

Ian