New Install XP to a SATA Drive

G

Guest

Dear All,

I am trying to install XP SP2 to a new SATA drive, all is fine except the
drive is not set as C: once installed. The drive letter comes last after
CD/DVD drives and USB card readers. Is there any way to fix this? The
machine is for a novice user who will be confussed if their boot drive is not
C:

TIA
 
M

Miss Perspicacia Tick

Matthew said:
Dear All,

I am trying to install XP SP2 to a new SATA drive, all is fine except
the drive is not set as C: once installed. The drive letter comes
last after CD/DVD drives and USB card readers. Is there any way to
fix this? The machine is for a novice user who will be confussed if
their boot drive is not C:

TIA


It seems that *YOU* are the "novice user" - I wouldn't allow you near any of
/my/ systems! The answer is obvious - you had an external drive attached
when you installed, the computer 'saw' this as 'C' but it couldn't install
Windows to it, so it installed it to the next drive it found. You will now
be required to remove all peripherals (which you should have known to do in
the first place), format the drive and reinstall.
 
G

Guest

OK Thanks for that!

SO how do I install windows without a CD-ROM Drive? If it is plugged in
then the HDD comes up as D:. Without it the machine has problems reading
from the CD! The Card reader is in fact internal plugged into a USB header
on the motherboard, no problem unplugging that when I install, but I really
do think that the CD-ROM drive is a bit essential.

Any other ideas?
 
C

***** charles

why can't you just re-assign the drive letters in disk manager?

I have heard you need a special driver when intalling on a
sata drive.

charles....
 
M

Mark

Why not just copy the i386 folder to your SATA Drive in another computer,
and boot via a dos floppy disk (assuming the pc has one) and run winnt.exe
from dos?
 
J

John R Weiss

Matthew said:
I am trying to install XP SP2 to a new SATA drive, all is fine except the
drive is not set as C: once installed. The drive letter comes last after
CD/DVD drives and USB card readers. Is there any way to fix this? The
machine is for a novice user who will be confussed if their boot drive is not
C:

Remove the USB devices from the system, then re-install. To do this you will
probably have to boot from the CD, and either do a "fix" or a complete
re-install.
 
M

Miss Perspicacia Tick

***** charles said:
why can't you just re-assign the drive letters in disk manager?

Because it is the system partition. If you attempt to do so, Windows will
not load ("missing NTLDR" or "cannot locate hal.dll") and a format and
reinstall would be required anyway. Go on, try it. It'll only cost you a
couple of hours of your time - and all your data. ;o) I dare ya! ;o)

I have heard you need a special driver when intalling on a
sata drive.

Yes, but he would have had that in order to install Windows in the first
place.
 
M

Miss Perspicacia Tick

Matthew said:
OK Thanks for that!

SO how do I install windows without a CD-ROM Drive? If it is plugged
in then the HDD comes up as D:. Without it the machine has problems
reading from the CD! The Card reader is in fact internal plugged
into a USB header on the motherboard, no problem unplugging that when
I install, but I really do think that the CD-ROM drive is a bit
essential.

Any other ideas?

And the reason you're not using an internal CD drive is...?
 

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