Primary Hard Drive is not C: 1

[xxman]

Hi All
I just installed xp professional and when I went
to check the files on the PC. I noticed that the
primary drive was not defined as C. I went into
Computer Management to change the drive letter
to C but windows will not allow the change. Is there
a way? Also, why did this problem occur in the first
place. Could it be a misplaced jumper setting. I do
have three hard drives installed. PS.. after the install
of the OS I installed another drive as the third drive
when I checked it was lettered as C:...I`d prefer my
primary as C..not my third drive as C:
Need some help..please!

 

[AlwaysUp]

Do you have any other OS's on the two remaining drives?

 

[xxman]

Hi

The third drive has xp professional. Do I have
to remove the OS files from the third drive so
I can rename the primary to C?
Thanks for the help

Do you have any other OS's on the two remaining drives?

 

[cdogg]

Because you had a primary partition on the "third" hard drive containing OS files, the master/slave configuration on each IDE channel would make a difference. During the installation of Windows, this "third" drive was probably the master on one of the IDE channels. I believe that the BIOS or OS scans for active primary boot partitions in the following order:

- Primary Master
- Secondary Master
- Primary Slave
- Secondary Slave


As for fixing the issue, you have several options. The easiest way (and often the best) is to start over with the drives in the right configuration. Make sure that the drive with XP installed is set as the master drive on the Primary IDE channel. Then format and reinstall Windows on it.

___________________________________________________________
Some of the article below describe other ways, but if you have any important data, it would be best to back up before attempting any of the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188

As a result of the change, you may also have to edit your boot.ini file. It should have an entry such as the following:

[blue]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect [/blue]


That is the manual way to do it. The other option is to try running a repair after you change the drive configuration:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[gus669]

To avoid confusion just take out the other drives and install XP on the drive you want it to be on. Then add the drives after install. As cdogg said though jumper them correctly.

or

Probably might be able to copy those system files to the 3rd hard drive, then using a bootable disk (Win98 Bootdisk would do fine) with FDISK on it. Get to a command prompt and run a FDISK /MBR on the drive. Then run FDISK to make sure your partitions or drive (where you installed XP)is set to active.

Hope this helps!

 

[xxman]

Hi cdogg (TechnicalUser)

I`ve installed xp two times in the past few days.
Will I run into problems with the activation policy.
Also, do I have to reformat the drive and reinstall.
Or can I just do a windows repair of the current version.
I did remove the other drives.

Thanks

 

[cdogg]

For a reinstall, not if you use this little trick:

http://sniptools.com/vault/reinstall-windows-xp-without-product-activation.htm

In your case, you should be starting from scratch (format and reinstall) since you still have a fresh copy of XP without any real preferences or applications loaded. It's the safest and surest way. Of course, you could try the repair first, which should work but will take some time to complete anyway.

Good luck...

~cdogg
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[danomac]

Are your other disks dynamic disks? I had this problem once, and it seems dynamic disks remember the partition you create. In my case, in Disk Management, there were a few partitions marked as "Missing" and I could not create a C: either.

What I did was physically unplug all drives except for the CDROM and the drive to install to. After that, I shut down and reconnected up the other 2 drives, and cleared out the missing volumes in Disk Management.

I tried installing 3 times before I realized what was going on, and each time I got a different OS drive letter.

Can anyone else confirm this?