How to change drive letter assignment prior to installing XP?

[Ronald]

How to change drive or partition letter during windows xp setup from CD,
when some other partiton has taken already drive C:
Right now it's a laptop, where is over 100GB of spare to create a Windows
partiton but on Windows XP setup blue screen states there is a drive C:
Partiton1 - HP Tools, which I don't want to delete but just how to assign
another drive letter to it?

Perhaps there is some extra tools on the Windows XP setup CD?

Thanks!

 

[JS]

Is the spare 100GB already part of the C: partition ?
If so then you will need a third party utility like EASEUS, Partition Magic,
Acronis Disk Director, BootIt Next Gen (which has a free trial) or
Super Fdisk (worth a look).

EASEUS Partition Manager has renamed as EASEUS Partition Master:
Freeware: http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

PartitionMagic 8.0
http://www.symantec.com/norton/partitionmagic

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/partitioning.html

BootIt: http://www.bootitng.com/
Acronis:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/partitioning.html
Partition Magic:
http://www.powerquest.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=sp&pvid=pm80
Super Fdisk Partition Utility:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Super_Fdisk_d4985.html

Warning:
As always backup any important data files (documents, photos, music, etc.),
before using such a tool as there is always a small chance that something
can go wrong.

Better still backup (Image backup) your entire C: partition to an
external drive, a second internal drive or in a pinch use DVD media.
You can use Acronis True Image to do this as True Image 2009
has a 15 day trial version available.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

(Acronis "Trial version" can create a Restore CD/Rescue Media,
"but I have not verified this yet". See the User's manual as you
will need to create this CD and use it should any problems occur)
User's Guide: http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage12_ug.en.pdf

 

[DL]

And are you not able to create a partition with the free space?
Was this laptop origonally configured for Vista out of the box?

 

[John John - MVP]

Just create a new partition out of the free space and then tell the
setup program to install Windows XP on the newly created partition. Do
a full NTFS format on the new partition. There is no need to remove the
HP service partition.

John

 

[Ronald]

Hello

Thanks for your thoughts.
There is unpartitioned space left after deleting Vista Business and then the
HP Tools partition was E: or whatever.
But first installation failed due to serial not compatible with whatever
version conflict and restarted the PC in order to install other version
considering with later MS phone downgrade activation.
When I restarted PC the HP Tools had changed it's letter to C: and there is
no way to make it to change it's mind to get another drive letter.

So I have a spare unpartioned space which I can partition to whatever other
letter except C:
But Windows is expected to be on C:, even if it works on other drive
letters, it means problems.

Obvilusly I need a third party bootable CD to change HP Tools partition
drive letter.
Is there any suitable freeware or a one time bootable evaluation CD
possibilty of any commercial software?

Thanks!

 

[John John - MVP]

You first have to start by creating a new partition out of the free
unallocated space and format it. Boot with the XP CD and create/format
the new partition. After you do this reboot the computer with the XP CD
and start the setup again and see how the drive letters are assigned.

If the C: drive letter remains assigned to the HP service partition you
can boot the computer with a Windows 98 setup floppy and use Fdisk to
mark the newly created partition as active or you can use the free trial
copy of BootItNG to set the new partition as active. You don't need to
install BootItNG, when asked to install just hit "Cancel' and you will
presented with the Maintenance Mode screen where you can select the
Partition Work screen option and from there you can view the MBR and
select the new partition and set it as 'Active'. After you set the new
partition as active you can boot with the Windows XP setup CD again and
the new partition should be assigned drive letter C:.

John