Disk Management Snap-in and Recovery Console Disagree

[Tim Tabor]

OK, this is driving my nuts.

The Disk Management snap-in shows
Disk 0
C:
D:
E:
Disk 1
F:
G:
H:

If I then fire up the Recovery Console, and enter MAP, I see
C: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
E: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
F: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
D: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition1
G: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition2
H: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition3

I've reformatted and repartitioned the drives, and re-installed XP, with no
effect.

This is important to me because XP's installer agrees with the Recovery
Console. I am trying to do an unattended install and point the ProfilesDir
to the D: drive. When I try this, Windows is installed with the screwed-up
drive mappings, and my profiles are put on the Hard Disk 1 rather than Hard
Disk 0. That's bad for me - Hard Disk 1 is for backups.

Question: How the heck can I get the Recovery Console's (and thus Windows
installer's) drive letters to agree with the Disk Management snap-in's?

Tim Tabor

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

OK, this is driving my nuts.

The Disk Management snap-in shows
Disk 0
C:
D:
E:
Disk 1
F:
G:
H:

Yes; XP does naturally enumerate HD volumes in that order - first the
primary on HD 0, then logicals on HD 0, then on to other HDs.

If I then fire up the Recovery Console, and enter MAP, I see
C: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
E: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
F: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition3
D: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition1
G: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition2
H: \Device\Harddisk1\Partition3

That's more like what a DOS mode IO.SYS would do; enumerate HD volumes
in the order of first all "first" primaries on all HDs, then all
logicals on all HDs, then all additional primaries on all HDs.

I've reformatted/repartitioned drives, re-installed XP, with no effect.

This is important to me because XP's installer agrees with the Recovery
Console. I am trying to do an unattended install and point the ProfilesDir
to the D: drive. When I try this, Windows is installed with the screwed-up
drive mappings, and my profiles are put on the Hard Disk 1 rather than Hard
Disk 0. That's bad for me - Hard Disk 1 is for backups.

The usual way to fix this sort of thing is to avoid having a primary
on the second HD, IOW create just the extended partition containing
the logicals, with the first being sized as your primary was.

Question: How the heck can I get the Recovery Console's (and thus Windows
installer's) drive letters to agree with the Disk Management snap-in's?

Try the above

Another more brittle tactic is to leave the second HD set to None, so
that PnP detects it after the first HD has its letters assigned. That
works in Win9x, where IO.SYS sets letters as per BIOS equipment list
before PnP assigns what it sees anew; no idea how this would pan out
in NT, and chances are modern BIOS will auto-detect anyway.

Not sure how RC's (or XP CD's pre-install env) logic works with drive
letters, etc. or even what OS it is, really. I'd thought RC was
basically core NT code wearing a different hat, but it's significant
that when the RC is on HD, the mechanism used to boot it is more like
a Win9x or DOS mode (BOOTSECT.DAT loaded as boot code image) rather
than NT (the more complex absolute HD/partition syntax).

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