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Windows XP on E:\

Started by mbaldw, June 11, 2008, 07:11 hrs

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mbaldw

Hi folks,

after a HDD failure in my laptop, I brought a replacement drive and have reinstalled XP Home.   However, it seems that the new drive has been labelled as E:\ and the internal memory card reader is now C:\.   Is this likely to pose any issues for installing additional software, or is the drive letter unimportant?   If Windows should be on C:\, I'm not sure how to change it ââ?¬â?? if I change it in the disk manager Iââ?¬â?¢m thinking that XP will fail to boot.   Windows automatically picked the new drive as E, presumably because it found the card reader first.   Assuming so, I'm wondering if a change to the boot sequence might help (although I'm sceptical)?

Secondly, as I'm starting afresh, I figure I may as well install SP3 before installing any software.   However, the laptop has an AMD (Athlon 64 2800+) processor.   I know that SP3 has caused problems for HP-made AMD machines without the patch, but the laptop is an Acer.   Does anyone know whether the problem is something potentially afflicting all AMD machines, or is it restricted to HP's?

Many thanks,
Marc.

Buffalo2102

Windows will work fine on the E: drive but I wouldn't leave it there personally - it's just not right and it would annoy the heck out of me.

The only safe way to change it is to re-install.  I think Partition Magic and maybe one or two other programs claim to be able to change the OS drive letter but it means that they also have to change all the registry entries and other references to application paths etc. and again, personally, I wouldn't trust it.  IMO, the best thing is to disable all drives except the C: drive and CD drive and do a fresh install.

As far as SP3 goes, there is a very good blog with advice about the AMD issues here http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/08/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx.

Buff
Vista x64 Home Premium. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Abit IP35, 4 Gig Kingston HyperX PC8500C5 DDR2, GTX260, Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer, Antec 900 Gaming Case.

mbaldw

Hi Buffalo,

thanks for the response.   It bugged me, so I took your advice and am reinstalling it now.   Oddly, when I booted to the XP CD it found the installed copy of XP and said it was on C:\, but booting into Windows it was definitely on E:\    Anyway, the new drive is 120 gig, so I found that partitioning it roughly in half allowed me to get Windows on C:\.

Thanks also for the link - I'll check that out now.

Cheers,
Marc.

scuzzy

This is the easy fix that does not require a reinstall of windows:

1. Go into Control Panel
2. Select Administrative Tools
3. Select Computer Management
4. In the left panel, under Storage, select Disk Management

Right-click on any drive that you want to reassign a different drive letter, and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" from the right-click menu.

In your case, you'd have to first free up "C" by reassigning the card reader a different letter, and then giving "C" back to Windows.
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Buffalo2102

I don't think that would work in this case.
Even if Disk Management allowed it, the OS drive letter would be changed to C:, the registry and other parts of Windows would continue to list paths as E:\....etc.  This means that large parts of the OS wouldn't function.

I'm not too sure about XP, but certainly in Vista, Disk Management won't actually allow you to change the drive letter of any system or boot volume or any drive that has pagefiles.

Buff
Vista x64 Home Premium. Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Abit IP35, 4 Gig Kingston HyperX PC8500C5 DDR2, GTX260, Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer, Antec 900 Gaming Case.

scuzzy

You may be right. I didn't think about that.
Antec Performance TX640B Case | WinXP Pro SP3 & Win7 64-bit | Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale LGA 775 3.16GHz Dual-Core | 8GB (4x2GB) PC6400 G-Skill RAM | eVGA 7600GT 256MB PCI-E | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 16MB Cache | 74GB WD Raptor SATA 8MB Cache | 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 16MB Cache | External 640GB WD Caviar SATA 32MB Cache | Sony DRU-V200S DVD/RW | PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W | Samsung SyncMaster 2494 (24") LCD Monitor | LG Flatron W2361V (23") LCD Monitor

sentofuno

the best thing to do is to unplug the card reader (this should be connected to the motherboard with a standard usb header) and reinstall again.


as for the drive letters in the windows setup, yes it does incorrectly assign C: to the first partition. but it will still become the next available letter when you install (helpful, isn't it?)


even if its possible to tamper with the drive letter assignments its just not worth it.