Reinstall, system/boot partition wierdness 1

[EvanK]

I'm trying to reinstall XP Pro on a 500GB hard drive that originally had two partitions:
1) 50GB - this partition is what i want to wipe clean and reinstall windows on
2) 450GB - this partition is just for storage and has tons of personal files on it.

I went through the blue DOS install screens like I've done a thousand times, deleted the 50GB partition, and selected it to install Windows on. Everything SEEMS to be going fine, until it finishes and I boot into windows to find that the 50G partition is assigned the D or E drive letter and marked as the Boot partition, and the 450GB is assigned the C drive letter and marked as the System partition.

What I am wanting to do is install the operating system ENTIRELY on the 50GB partition...How do I fix this? I would prefer to completely redo the install process just to avoid any lingering registry or MBR remnants.

 

[BadBigBen]

deleted the 50GB partition, and selected it to install Windows on.

without formatting I assume...

What has happened is that the SETUP recognized the existing 450GB partition as drive C, before it went ahead and formatted the 50gb partition and installed the OS thus making the drive as drive D... also make sure that you have no card reader installed on the system as they tend to interfere with the drive lettering...

to fix: it would either take a registry hack or a reinstall, but this time you format the 50gb partition thus making it drive C and the 450gb as drive D ...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[EvanK]

thanks for the response. i took your advice and booted into a freedos-based fdisk (obtained from ultimatebootcd.com) to look at the partition table, and realized that the install had recreated the 50G as an *extended* dos partition.

i recreated it as a primary and marked it as active, and reinstalled one more time. all seems well now. i'm still unsure how it got messed up in the first place, probably just a temporary case of PEBKAC.

again, thanks, ben.

 

[linney]

XP comes with all setup files for creating, formatting and installing XP on the XP CD, I was just wondering why you are using third party tools to do that which XP Setup will do automatically for you?

HOW TO: Partition and Format a Hard Disk in Windows XP (Q313348)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q313/3/48.asp

Read the paragraph,
"How to Partition and Format Your Hard Disk by Using Windows XP Setup."


For more help (shows enlargeable screenshots) go here.

http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_pro.htm

 

[EvanK]

well, the setup program doesnt give as fine grained control as fdisk, such as (for example) creating primary vs extended partitions. thus it was hiding the real problem from me, and I was unable to FIX the problem. so i opted to use a tool that *would* allow me to see and fix said problem.

 

[wolluf]

Yes - when using XP's setup to manipulate partitions, need to remember it will create an extended partition if there is already a primary partition present. If you have existing partition structure correct & you only want to overwrite the 'system' partition, just select it & you will be given the option to format it before the install begins (this should have stopped your problem, assuming your original 50GB partition was primary) rather than deleting and creating new partition.

 

[linney]

Windows XP Professional offers two storage types: basic disk and dynamic disk. Basic disks use the same disk structures as those used in Windows Me or earlier, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, and Microsoft Windows 2000. When using basic disks, you are limited to creating four primary partitions per disk, or three primary partitions and one extended partition with unlimited logical drives. Primary partitions and logical drives on basic disks are known as basic volumes".

Windows XP Professional Resource Kit
Disk Management