Microsoft's obsession with the C: drive?

[Guest]

I did a clean install of beta2.

i have xpp installed on c: drive.

vista on the second partition of my primary drive.

during setup i partitioned and formatted the D: partition. expecting vista
to be installed to the D drive.

but after setup vista is on a c: partition. and it shows XPP on D: and i
think you can't change the drive letters of a system or boot partition.

if I boot into XP it is on the c: and it shows vista on E:

hope this is will be resolved before RTM.

no biggie, but it would be nice if I could keep the same drive letters for
the same partitions\drives in different OS's.

or even better if you had the option to select a drive letter for each drive
including CD\ DVD devices during Windows setup

i.e.

HDD0 Partition0 = C:
DVD = D:
HDD0 Partition1 = V:
DVD-RW = W:
HDD1 Partition 0 = X:



I don't need to hear that this is by design, or to use 3rd party
partitioning software...

What is Microsoft's obsession with the C: drive?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

The drive letters are assigned from the point of view of the OS you have
booted into. The drive you see as C: from within XP may appear with a
different letter from within Vista. This is normal and not harmful.

 

[Guest]

the point i was trying to get across was that if I select the D partition
during setup windows should install to the Drive i select.

"The drive letters are assigned from the point of view of the OS you have
booted into."
- uhhh, I was performing a CLEAN INSTALL, the operating system I
booted into was the Vista installation CD, vista setup listed my XP
partition as the C drive. I partitioned and formated and started the install
on what vista setup detected as the D drive.

But the Vista install is calling the second partition on my primary drive
the C drive.
When the primary partition is the "REAL" C drive.

This is NOT Normal, this is new with VISTA.

Dual booting with XP does not produce the same results. XP gets installed to
the drive letter you select during a clean install.

Not harmful, but it is confusing.

 

[The Dude]

During the install of Vista, the installer doesn't see it as the "D:" drive.
It sees it as a partition. You're just going to have to live with it, or
not use Vista.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It will install on the partition you select but it will determine drive
letters for the machine independently of the selection made by XP when it
was installed.

 

[Richard Urban]

the point i was trying to get across was that if I select the D partition
during setup windows should install to the Drive i select.

"The drive letters are assigned from the point of view of the OS you have
booted into."
- uhhh, I was performing a CLEAN INSTALL, the operating system I
booted into was the Vista installation CD, vista setup listed my XP
partition as the C drive. I partitioned and formated and started the
install
on what vista setup detected as the D drive.

But the Vista install is calling the second partition on my primary drive
the C drive.
When the primary partition is the "REAL" C drive.

This is NOT Normal, this is new with VISTA.

Dual booting with XP does not produce the same results. XP gets installed
to
the drive letter you select during a clean install.

Not harmful, but it is confusing.

This is because Vista is installed on a primary partition and only one
primary partition can be bootable (active) at a given instance. The booted
primary partition "will" be the C: drive.

Live with it.

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
MVP Windows Shell/User
(using Vista 5384.4)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew half as much as you think you know,
You would realize you don't know what you thought you knew.

 

[Mike]

the point i was trying to get across was that if I select the D partition
during setup windows should install to the Drive i select.

"The drive letters are assigned from the point of view of the OS you have
booted into."
- uhhh, I was performing a CLEAN INSTALL, the operating system I
booted into was the Vista installation CD, vista setup listed my XP
partition as the C drive. I partitioned and formated and started the
install
on what vista setup detected as the D drive.

But the Vista install is calling the second partition on my primary drive
the C drive.
When the primary partition is the "REAL" C drive.

This is NOT Normal, this is new with VISTA.

It has always been this way.

If you install to a Primary partition, then that partition will be C: when
booted. If you install to an extended partition, then the drive letters
will remain the same.

For example, I have 2 physical drives in my machine. My XP install is on
the first logical drive of the extended partition of the first drive, so it
is seen as drive E:. When booted into XP, the Vista partition - the first
primary of the 2nd drive - is seen as D:. When booted into Vista, it's
partition is seen as C:. XP is still seen as E;, but the C and D drive s
are switched.

Primaries get assigned letters first, then secondaries. The booted Primary
partition is always C: However, booted logical/extended do *not* become
C:, so my example above of XP is always on Drive E:, even when XP is booted.

Mike

 

[Bruce Chambers]

This is because Vista is installed on a primary partition and only one
primary partition can be bootable (active) at a given instance. The
booted primary partition "will" be the C: drive.

No, Richard, that's not what Troma said or did. I've encountered
exactly the same "phenomenom," for want of a better word.

Like Troma, I dual-boot between WinXP and Vista (64-bit versions of
both, not that it matters, in this case). I have one physical hard
drive in the PC, divided into one Primary partition and one Extended
partition containing two logical drives. WinXPx64 has been installed on
the Primary Active partition for over a year. WinXPx64 has always, as
expected, listed this partition as C:, with the letters D: and E:
assigned to the two logical drives in the Extended partition.

When I installed Vista64, I deliberately created a dual-boot by
directing Vista64 to be installed on the first logical drive in the
Extended partition (WinXPx64's D: drive). In planning the dual-boot, I
had created and named the volume labels of the various partitions to
ease identification during the installation of Vista64. The Primary
active (bootable) partition, a.k.a. "C:," was labeled "WinXPx64," the
first logical drive of the Extended partition, a.k.a. "D:," was labeled
"Vista64B2," and the remaining logical drive, a.k.a. "E:," was labeled
"Data." All went well with the installation, and I'm dual-booting using
Vista's native boot manager.

When I boot into WinXPx64, the drive letters and volume labels remain
as they were created, and as one would have expected, based on all
earlier multi-boot scenarios using Microsoft's native boot loader.

However, when I boot into Vista, both Windows Explorer and the Disk
Manager report the C: drive to be the volume (a logical drive in an
Extended partition, remember) labeled "Vista64B2" and the D: drive to be
the volume (the only Primary Active partition on the hard drive) labeled
"WinXPx64." The drive letter for the "Data" volume remained unchanged.
Only Vista's Boot Configuration files are on the Primary Active partition.

This (relabeling the partition containing the OS as "C:," rather than
"hard-coding" C: to the Primary Active partition) is new behavior for a
Microsoft OS. And, as Troma says, it's a harmless feature, but it is
initially confusing to those of us who have habitually multi-boot
Microsoft operating systems for many years.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

 

[éÇÏÒØ ìÅÊËÏ]

the point i was trying to get across was that if I select the D partition
during setup windows should install to the Drive i select.

Yes, it was installed to partition you pointed
If you want to keep the same drive letter assigning you must run setup from
current WinXP installation.

 

[Richard Urban]

Oops! Sorry about the incorrect time. (-:

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Strange!

I installed Vista on a primary DOS partition (the 3rd partition on drive 0).
When I boot into Vista, it "is" drive C:

The primary partition that Windows XP is on is tagged as "inactive" - and is
not seen by the Vista operating system except within disk management.

Of course, I am using a 3rd party boot manager program.

That would explain the differences you see.

I never allow any
Microsoft service to act as my boot manager. I like total control and
Microsoft just does not give me that.

How curious! I prefer to use Microsoft's native boot loaders, and
avoid all 3rd party boot managers, because I don't feel that the
3rd-party apps give me the level of control I want, while the Microsoft
tools give me precise control and easily editable text files for
configuration. (Vista's BCDedit may make me rethink that position,
obviously.)



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

 

[Menno Hershberger]

I did a clean install of beta2.

i have xpp installed on c: drive.

vista on the second partition of my primary drive.

during setup i partitioned and formatted the D: partition. expecting
vista to be installed to the D drive.

but after setup vista is on a c: partition. and it shows XPP on D: and
i think you can't change the drive letters of a system or boot
partition.

if I boot into XP it is on the c: and it shows vista on E:

hope this is will be resolved before RTM.

no biggie, but it would be nice if I could keep the same drive letters
for the same partitions\drives in different OS's.

or even better if you had the option to select a drive letter for each
drive including CD\ DVD devices during Windows setup

i.e.

HDD0 Partition0 = C:
DVD = D:
HDD0 Partition1 = V:
DVD-RW = W:
HDD1 Partition 0 = X:



I don't need to hear that this is by design, or to use 3rd party
partitioning software...

What is Microsoft's obsession with the C: drive?

This may or may not be relevant.
I dual booted Windows 98 and XP. Windows 98 is on C and XP was on D.
I also have three other logical drives (E, F, & G)
All five partitions are on one physical drive.
I did a clean install of Vista (booted from CD).
I picked the D Drive (with XP on it) for the installation.
I was warned that there was a current installation on that drive and that
it would put all that in a folder called "windows.old"
I proceeded with the install.
The drive letters came out right. Vista is on D.
All the rest are where they're supposed to be.
My boot menu offers me Windows (Vista), Previous version of Windows,
Windows 98, and the Recovery Console.
If I pick Windows 98, Windows 98 won't boot.
If I pick Recovery Console, the Console comes up but my administrator
password is no longer valid.
If I pick "Previous Operating System" I get my old boot menu with
XP, Windows 98, and Recovery Console.
From there XP will start to boot and then quit. That doesn't bother me
since I didn't expect XP to work anyway.
And if I pick Windows 98 from that menu, 98 boots up just fine.
Recovery Console just gives me a disk error.

But the drive letters are right... that's what the thread was about.

I've done all this on a mirrored drive, so I don't have anything to lose.
Next thing I'm going to try is converting the Vista partition to Fat 32
so I can see it from within Windows 98. I also have a problem with all
the permission issues. There's only one of me and I have three computers
networked and I don't NEED permission to do whatever I want between them!

 

[Guest]

-- could anyone suggest in above problem as i have now for solution.on vista
64 c: drive and XP pro F drive . no multiboot.
i manage to get back xp pro by using system recovery disc(XP disc) and it
shoe xp on C: drive and vista on E : drive.How can i get dural boot ?

any advice appreciated.

bigscreen

 

[Richard Urban]

Strange!

I installed Vista on a primary DOS partition (the 3rd partition on drive 0).
When I boot into Vista, it "is" drive C:

The primary partition that Windows XP is on is tagged as "inactive" - and is
not seen by the Vista operating system except within disk management.

Of course, I am using a 3rd party boot manager program. I never allow any
Microsoft service to act as my boot manager. I like total control and
Microsoft just does not give me that.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[milleron]

Hmmm . . . my installation did NOT work as yours did. I created an
NTFS partition and formatted it in XP where I assigned it a drive
letter of "V." I then launched Vista Setup from within XP and chose
"custom" install. I told it that I wanted it to install Vista on V:.
It did. Now my drive letters are exactly the same whether I'm in XP
or Vista. In both operating systems, XP is on "C:" and Vista is on
"V:" so it looks as though they have "fixed it" before release. For
anyone having this problem, I'd suggest assigning a drive letter to
the Vista drive before installing Vista and then launching the Vista
Setup from within the primary operating system.

 

[Beverly Brown]

No, troma is right, the behavior is different. Even some MS employees I
spoke with at WinHEC were surprised by this behavior.

I have a 64-bit system and I have 4 primary partitions. XP32, XP64, Vista32
and Vista64. When I am in XP32 and XP64, the driver letters appear in the
same order - C:, D:, E:, F:. when I boot into either vista partition, they
are different. When I boot into Vista32, they are in this order D:, E:, C:,
F: and when I boot into Vista 64, the look like this, D:, E:, F:, C:.

That is if I installed vista by booting from the DVD. If I install Vista to
the same primary partitions by runing setup from within XP, I get the same
drive order as I as in XP (which is what most of us would expect to see).

This behavior is definitely different and violates the rule of "least
surprise". It is seen to be harmless but when people are expecting certain
partitions to always be ceretain drive letters regardless of which OS you've
booted into, someone could accidently delete something from the wrong drive
letter believing that it was a different one.

Beverly

 

[Beverly Brown]

Yes, the drive letter assignment depends on how you install it. If you run
setup from within XP it will use the drive letters that XP uses. If you
install it by booting from DVD, it will always assign the Vista partition
the drive letter C:. If you have 2 Vista partitions, they will both believe
that they are drive C: when you are booted into them.

Beverly

 

[Jim Fraas]

That wasn't the case with me.
'My settings

C: - XP
D - Napster music files
E - Documents (downloads go here in a Downloads folder)
F - DVD-RW drive
G VISTA!
H - OS files for XP AND vista (thisd partition is only 10 gigs)


They are the same in Vista reading the XP drive as C and the Vista drive as
G

 

[mikeyhsd]

if you install from within another OS instead of boot from dvd, it will use the correct drive letter.



(e-mail address removed)



I did a clean install of beta2.

i have xpp installed on c: drive.

vista on the second partition of my primary drive.

during setup i partitioned and formatted the D: partition. expecting vista
to be installed to the D drive.

but after setup vista is on a c: partition. and it shows XPP on D: and i
think you can't change the drive letters of a system or boot partition.

if I boot into XP it is on the c: and it shows vista on E:

hope this is will be resolved before RTM.

no biggie, but it would be nice if I could keep the same drive letters for
the same partitions\drives in different OS's.

or even better if you had the option to select a drive letter for each drive
including CD\ DVD devices during Windows setup

i.e.

HDD0 Partition0 = C:
DVD = D:
HDD0 Partition1 = V:
DVD-RW = W:
HDD1 Partition 0 = X:



I don't need to hear that this is by design, or to use 3rd party
partitioning software...

What is Microsoft's obsession with the C: drive?

 

[roman modic]

Hello!
if you install from within another OS instead of boot from dvd, it will use the correct drive letter.

Is it possible to install Vista from Windows 98SE?

Thanks, Roman