Changing a drive letter

I just reformatted but for some reason windows is now installed on G: of all place. I want to change it back to C: so I fired up partition magic. It's warning me that the computer may not boot if I change the current C: to something else and the OS Drive to C:. Anyone have suggestions on this?

XP? Go into Control Panel, Adminstation Tools, Computer Managment and Disk Management. You should be able to change your drive lettters there. Although you may have to play musical driver to get your boot drive where you want it.

Tried that. Won't let me change a drive letter when files are in use. I'm thinking of trying Barts PE and try it that way. Or in partition magic, turning all drives except the one I want to be C: into logical partitions and only have that one drive as a primary.

You're only other option is to start yanking cables inside the case. If you put the drive containing XP as the master on your primary IDE it should pick that up as C. The most important thing would be for your optical drives to be:

1) on a different IDE channel, or

2) slaves if connected to the primary IDE channel

Still waiting for Partition Magic to change the logical/primar thing. This thing goes sloooooow.

It's not working :(. I can't even reinstall windows on it since it isnt a Windows XP-compatible partition.

Sorry Edwin, the only way I ever got around it was unplugging any extra hard-drives and installing XP again.

It won't let me install XP since the hdd is not a Windows XP-compatible partition. It won't even let me try to create a xp compatible partition either.

Here's something really cheapass.

1) run command window
type the following:

g:
cd\

copy con fakec.bat
subst g: c:\

[PRESS F6, followed by ENTER to exit and save]

2) Go to G:\, select fakec.bat and click Copy.

3) Go to your start menu (explore all users), go to Startup folder, right click, and select "Paste Shortcut".

4) You _may_ need to go to shortcut properties and make sure that it closes the DOS window after execution instead of leaving it hanging.

Voila. The downside is that you'll still have a drive G:. The upside is that you'll have it also as drive C:

umount /dev/hda1
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/C

shihonage wrote:

Here's something really cheapass.

1) run command window
type the following:

g:
cd\r

copy con fakec.bat
subst g: c:\r

[PRESS F6, followed by ENTER to exit and save]

2) Go to G:, select fakec.bat and click Copy.

3) Go to your start menu (explore all users), go to Startup folder, right click, and select "Paste Shortcut".

4) You _may_ need to go to shortcut properties and make sure that it closes the DOS window after execution instead of leaving it hanging.

Voila. The downside is that you'll still have a drive G:. The upside is that you'll have it also as drive C:

I would try that but I can't get windows to install. Says the drive doesn't have a valid XP-compatbile partition.

When you boot off Windows XP CD, there's an option to delete all partitions one by one until you just get "Unpartitioned space".
You can select that "Unpartitioned space" and select it as the destination for the Windows XP install. It will make it into a big partition. Make sure to use NTFS filesystem, of course. And I would recommend normal format as opposed to "quick" format. A quick format is acceptable when you didn't change partition parameters beforehand and simply want to erase data, but otherwise, I'd suggest spending the time on a normal format.

Negatory. I had the disk space as NTFS, RAW, and unpartitioned and thats the error I'm receiving. If it was something as simple as that I wouldn't ask for help. Appreciate it though!

So what you're saying is that you managed to get your hard drive into a state where a clean format is impossible ? Whatever it is, Partition Magic should be sophisticated enough to be able to wipe out all the data and give you a clean partition. Unless your IDE cable is falling out or something. Your problem sounds very strange, and given how you created it through software, it should be reversible through software.

But I can't get into partition magic. The partition magic recover disks also don't support usb drive creation (hard coded to ask for a floppy disk that is 1.44 mb). Of course this PC doesn't have a floppy drive either. You would think by 2005 developers would start allowing use of USB drives as boot disks damn it!

I have real trouble believing that a recent version of Partition Magic cannot be booted off a CD. If it is so, they really dropped the ball. Either way, you can still find bootable CD images on the internet, burn one, boot from it, and access your CD drive with partition magic executable on it ... or something.
Just make sure the image has generic IDE drivers...

It's Partition Magic 8. Don't know if that is the latest or not.

I'd go out on a limb to assume that his PartitionMagic is warez. 8)

I've had this problem before... its annoying..but you need to ensure that you have nothing extra plugged into your system when your installing XP..

XP has a nasty habit of putting in removable USB drives (like Flash Memory readers) before SATA or even IDE drives and assigning them C: D: E: etc.. and you first HD the next letter.. highly annoying..

even on certain mobos IDE drives show up before SATA drives forcing you to install to E: or something like that.. especially if there is a formated partition on the ide drive before install..

Safest way and simplest is to unplug your Flash memory reader and your IDE drives (if installing to a SATA drive) and install XP..

then plug all your other stuff in and viola problem solved.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

I'd go out on a limb to assume that his PartitionMagic is warez. 8)

Isn't everyone's?

It's not warez, its the office copy im running over the network. Good luck finding any disc around here.

If I unlug the IDE drives the system wont POST. I plug them in and it boots like normal. The only thing I can think of is that I need a System and a boot partition. For some reason a bunch of small unpartition 8mb sized chunks were created. I formatted it (c:) and then it lets me install XP on any of the partitions. Thats my only lead.

Edwin wrote:

It's not warez, its the office copy im running over the network. Good luck finding any disc around here.

If I unlug the IDE drives the system wont POST. I plug them in and it boots like normal. The only thing I can think of is that I need a System and a boot partition. For some reason a bunch of small unpartition 8mb sized chunks were created. I formatted it (c:) and then it lets me install XP on any of the partitions. Thats my only lead.

you need to tell me exactly what hardware you have in your system...and how its getting connected..

then I can tell you how to fix it.

*confused*

OK, so you have unplugged all your hard drives except the one you wish to be C:. You pop in XP disk and boot off that. At this point it's not letting you install XP, even after you blasted/wiped the partitions that were there?

If that's what is happening, and assuming there isn't anything on that disk you need to keep, boot up the XP CD, and bring up the Recovery Console (hit R at the first menu), and type in the command "fixboot", and "fixmbr". That should rewrite you boot records that Partition Magic fiddled with.

intel D875PBZLK Socket 478 Intel 875P ATX Intel Motherboard
intel Pentium 4 3.0C Northwood 800MHz FSB Socket 478 Processor Model BX80532PG3000D
CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) TWINX1024-3200LL
GeForce 6800 GT
Maxtor 98196H8 (Slave on IDE 2)
SeaGate ST3160023AS (Sata)
SeaGate ST3200822AS (sata)
SeaGate ST340810A (Slave on IDE 1)
ASUS CRW-5224A (Master on IDE 1)
NEC DVD-RW ND-1300A (Master on IDE 2)
Antec TRUEBLUE 480 ATX12V 480W Power Supply

It's the same setup i've had for almost a year now with no changes. I just wanted to install XP on a different partition (moving from the IDE drive to a partition on the SATA drive).

LupusUmbrus wrote:

*confused*

OK, so you have unplugged all your hard drives except the one you wish to be C:. You pop in XP disk and boot off that. At this point it's not letting you install XP, even after you blasted/wiped the partitions that were there?

If that's what is happening, and assuming there isn't anything on that disk you need to keep, boot up the XP CD, and bring up the Recovery Console (hit R at the first menu), and type in the command "fixboot", and "fixmbr". That should rewrite you boot records that Partition Magic fiddled with.

Will this also work with a 2k or 98SE disc? For some reason the XP disc I have doesn't have this option.

Hmmm, I may be mistaken, but don't you need disk drivers to install XP to a SATA disk?

(I know you do for SCSI and RAID, but I can't remember if XP puts SATA in the same group as those...)

Most any XP or 2k install disk should have the recovery console option. It should be the first menu you come to once everything is done loading. You'll have the option of installing windows [enter], recovery console [R], or quiting [F3], assuming the install disk has this ability.

The last install I did to a system with a SATA drive did require you to have the controler drivers on hand (on a floppy).

I'm using the onboard SATA controller so the installation disc recognizes it without a problem.

L_Xan is correct during boot up for setup on any non-IDE drives you should hit F6 to load the drivers for your SATA/SCSI drive so the preinstall can see what's going on. Just like you'd have to add these drivers to BART to see these drives.

If you had all IDE drives and were still getting the same issue my question then would have been if you're dual booting (w/ linux) as I'm pretty sure you have to install windows first in that situation. I haven't done it personally in two years so sorry if I got it reversed.

EDIT - I had my comment in progress while Ed replied about the onboard stuff. You may still need a driver for the onboard controller IMO.

If I remove the IDE drives it won't post. Not posting wont let me get to the windows installation. If I leave the IDE drives there it works fine and the windows installation finds the SATA drives without drivers. There is no need for drivers here.

Edwin wrote:

If I remove the IDE drives it won't post. Not posting wont let me get to the windows installation. If I leave the IDE drives there it works fine and the windows installation finds the SATA drives without drivers. There is no need for drivers here.

Ok...lets start from scratch... are you able to completely wipe clean the drive you want to install XP too? or are you trying to preserve some of the data on there and simply install XP into it?

If you can wipe from scratch you need to fix your MBR on that SATA drive... usually downloading the manuf. tools onto a floppy and booting from that to fix the MBR is sufficient.

Also...make sure your SATA drive is correctly configured in BIOS.. usually on the 875P's AUTO for the drive type is sufficient but not always...sometimes you have to set it to LBA to get it to boot properly.

When you say your system cannot post do you mean physically post to BIOS? or do you mean not boot XP? As long as you can physically post to BIOS and fiddle with your BIOS settings with all other drives disconnected except the install SATA and 1 Optical for the XP CD you should be ok.

The 875/865 chipset has native SATA support so no SATA driver is needed as you stated.

Simply boot from the XP install CD and format the one SATA drive NTFS and you should be good to go.. once into XP and fully configured connect teh rest of your SATA and IDE drives and you can fiddle with their drive letters to your hearts content.

IF you cannot post at all with your IDE drives unplugged then pull your CMOS battery wait for 5 minutes to fully clear your BIOS settings and then try posting with just the one SATA and 1 IDE Optical installed..MAKE sure your BIOS is cleared...sometimes you have to set a jumper if the battery pulling doesnt work. Pull the power plug to to make sure mobo isnt getting any power.

You should be able to post no matter what drives are connected/disconnected..if not try flashing your BIOS to the latest and greatest.