Re-installing XP Home Ed. on an HP zx5000

[Ken Springer]

In Ken Springer typed:

Actually changing drive letters is a piece of cake under XP's Disk
Management. There are only two things that I can think of which would be
the exception.

Biological memory may be weak here, that happens when you get old (LOL),
but this is the situation as I remember it:

I had a computer with 2 optical drives. Picking drive letters out of
the blue, the upper drive was F:\, the lower drive was E:\. Backwards
and illogical to me. It makes more sense if the upper drive was E:\,
and the lower drive was F:\.

Using XP Disk Mgmt., I couldn't just tell the system change E to F, and
F to E. First, I had to change one drive to some letter that wasn't
going to be in used at the end.

So, the needed steps in Disk Mgmt. as I remember them:

1. Change F to Q.
2. Change E to F.
3. Change Q to E.

If my memory is correct, I couldn't do step 3 until I did 1&2 and
rebooted the computer.

1) I don't think you can change floppy drives. I don't know, I never
tried.

I don't know either, and so many computers no longer have a 2nd floppy
these days. And, some of the older BIOS's I've run across actually ID
the floppies as A and B, so that may be a factor also.

2) Changing the system drive letter is off limits for Windows Disk
Management. This includes the OS and where the applications are
installed. As this task is beyond the ability of DM. As this drive
letter is rooted into so many different parts of the OS.

But, an enterprising programmer may be able to write a routine to change
all those points. Probably not in their free version, though.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 8.0.1
Thunderbird 8.0
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[Ken Springer]

Right, I pointed that out earlier in the thread when someone claimed
that "C:" is hardcoded in the Registry. It's not, of course. Windows
can be installed to any drive letter, C thru Z. (I think A and B are
off the table.)

LOL! Not to mention XP wouldn't fit on a floppy. But, I remember
booting from a floppy for DOS 3.22.

XP's Disk Management console is stripped down to the most basic of the
basics, but one thing it does well is allow you to change drive
letters, at least on the non-system drives. Right click on the drive,
select "Change drive letter and paths", and it's right there. I don't
know how it could be any more clear or intuitive.

Have you tried the situation I mentioned to BillW50?

Hmm, I can't see that XP's Disk Management console even has that
capability. Win 7, yes, but I don't see it in XP. Personally, I use
Acronis Disk Director for all of my disk& partition management tasks,
with the exception of changing drive letters. I use XP's Disk
Management console for that because it's so quick and easy.

I don't own Win 7, but will after 8 comes out, and hopefully I can get
it considerably cheaper at that point. I'll install it under Parallels
Desktop for Mac, and see what happens. I currently have XP Pro and
Vista Ultimate there.

I use the free/home version of EaseUS Partition Master, and I can change
partition sizes and drive letters with no problem, and when the computer
reboots, the data is moved as necessary.

I've resized the system partition, but never tried changing the drive
letter.

Another interesting thought that just occurred for the first time, what
if you pulled the drive with the system partition, and then connected it
to a 2nd computer and played with things there. I wonder what kind of
disaster we could create... LOL!



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 8.0.1
Thunderbird 8.0
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[BillW50]

In Ken Springer typed:

Biological memory may be weak here, that happens when you get old
(LOL), but this is the situation as I remember it:

I had a computer with 2 optical drives. Picking drive letters out of
the blue, the upper drive was F:\, the lower drive was E:\. Backwards
and illogical to me. It makes more sense if the upper drive was E:\,
and the lower drive was F:\.

Using XP Disk Mgmt., I couldn't just tell the system change E to F,
and F to E. First, I had to change one drive to some letter that
wasn't going to be in used at the end.

So, the needed steps in Disk Mgmt. as I remember them:

1. Change F to Q.
2. Change E to F.
3. Change Q to E.

If my memory is correct, I couldn't do step 3 until I did 1&2 and
rebooted the computer.

Yes true. DM won't allow you to use a drive letter that is currently in
use. But that makes perfect sense to me anyway. And can also unassigned
the drive letter and that will free the drive letter too.

I don't know either, and so many computers no longer have a 2nd floppy
these days. And, some of the older BIOS's I've run across actually ID
the floppies as A and B, so that may be a factor also.

Yes true.

But, an enterprising programmer may be able to write a routine to
change all those points. Probably not in their free version, though.

Well I have utilities that claim to be able to do just this. They do
other things too and I never used them to change the system drive
letter. So they already exists. Although I never tried one to see how
well they work for this task.

I could see lots of problems for a program which claims to be able to do
this though. As I did try to do this manually before. And changing all
references in the registry isn't everything that needs to be done. As
there are lots more too. Like the application links in the Start menu,
desktop, etc. too. This is a super big job and not an easy one. And
trust me, reinstalling Windows from scratch (including your
applications) is far easier than trying to do this job manually.

So any utility that claims to be able to pull it off and actually
does... my hat is off to them. Earlier versions of Partition Magic used
to include an utility called Magic Mover. While I don't think it could
move the system to another drive letter, it did move applications (you
can pick which ones to move) to another one. This task is also very
complex like changing the drive letter of the system drive.

And I'll be darn... I even tried to make it fail by moving things where
I figured the utility won't get right. And I never found a single flaw
it ever made. I was really impressed. Except for changing DOS programs
to where they look for things, but any Windows applications it got
right. And changing DOS programs would be an impossible task since every
one stores that info differently in a proprietary matter anyway.

I am not sure, but I think PM5 was the last version to include Magic
Mover. I don't know why they stopped including it. I never had a
problem, but I could see one tiny mistake anywhere could create a huge
mess. Maybe the liability was just too high that they just killed it, I
don't know.

 

[Char Jackson]

Biological memory may be weak here, that happens when you get old (LOL),
but this is the situation as I remember it:

I had a computer with 2 optical drives. Picking drive letters out of
the blue, the upper drive was F:\, the lower drive was E:\. Backwards
and illogical to me. It makes more sense if the upper drive was E:\,
and the lower drive was F:\.

Using XP Disk Mgmt., I couldn't just tell the system change E to F, and
F to E. First, I had to change one drive to some letter that wasn't
going to be in used at the end.

So, the needed steps in Disk Mgmt. as I remember them:

1. Change F to Q.
2. Change E to F.
3. Change Q to E.

Your memory is fine and hopefully the sequence makes perfect sense to
you. You obviously can't have two drives using the same letter, so if
you want to swap letters between two drives it should make sense to
you that three steps are involved. You don't necessarily have to
assign a temporary letter like you did; you could just as easily
assign no letter at all in the first step, but it's still going to be
three steps to swap two drive letters.

If my memory is correct, I couldn't do step 3 until I did 1&2 and
rebooted the computer.

I'm never asked to reboot in that situation.

I don't know either, and so many computers no longer have a 2nd floppy
these days. And, some of the older BIOS's I've run across actually ID
the floppies as A and B, so that may be a factor also.

I think you meant to say that most computers don't have any floppy
drive at all, let alone a second floppy. IIRC, I dumped my last floppy
drive in 1999.

 

[Char Jackson]

LOL! Not to mention XP wouldn't fit on a floppy. But, I remember
booting from a floppy for DOS 3.22.

No, I meant that A and B are reserved for floppy drives and can't be
assigned to other storage devices, such as hard drives, optical
drives, USB drives, etc.

Have you tried the situation I mentioned to BillW50?

Yes. I replied there so I won't repeat it here.

I don't own Win 7, but will after 8 comes out, and hopefully I can get
it considerably cheaper at that point. I'll install it under Parallels
Desktop for Mac, and see what happens. I currently have XP Pro and
Vista Ultimate there.

I use the free/home version of EaseUS Partition Master, and I can change
partition sizes and drive letters with no problem, and when the computer
reboots, the data is moved as necessary.

The data is moved? What does that mean? Why does data need to be moved
as a result of changing drive letters? Also, why is a reboot needed?
Does Easus require a reboot before carrying out your partition resize
request? Acronis and other partition managers (the old Partition Magic
comes to mind) just carry out the resize request without requiring a
reboot, unless of course you're trying to resize the system drive.

I've resized the system partition, but never tried changing the drive
letter.

You won't be able to change the system drive letter.

Another interesting thought that just occurred for the first time, what
if you pulled the drive with the system partition, and then connected it
to a 2nd computer and played with things there. I wonder what kind of
disaster we could create... LOL!

It depends on what you mean by "played with things". It's just another
data drive at that point, so resizing a partition is uneventful, but
you don't have an opportunity to change the drive letter in a way that
will stick (and work) when you reinstall the drive in the old system.

 

[Ken Springer]

No, I meant that A and B are reserved for floppy drives and can't be
assigned to other storage devices, such as hard drives, optical
drives, USB drives, etc.

OK, got it.

The data is moved? What does that mean? Why does data need to be moved
as a result of changing drive letters? Also, why is a reboot needed?
Does Easus require a reboot before carrying out your partition resize
request? Acronis and other partition managers (the old Partition Magic
comes to mind) just carry out the resize request without requiring a
reboot, unless of course you're trying to resize the system drive.

I'm changing both drive letters and partition sizes at the same time,
not just changing drive letters. If you make a partition smaller, and
there is data in an area of the partition that will no longer be part of
that partition, something has to happen to the data.

EaseUS can change partition sizes and drive letters in one overall
operation.

You won't be able to change the system drive letter.


It depends on what you mean by "played with things". It's just another
data drive at that point, so resizing a partition is uneventful, but
you don't have an opportunity to change the drive letter in a way that
will stick (and work) when you reinstall the drive in the old system.

"Playing with things" meaning trying something you might no normally do,
such as messing with the system partition on the drive.



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 8.0.1
Thunderbird 8.0
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[Ken Springer]

Your memory is fine and hopefully the sequence makes perfect sense to
you. You obviously can't have two drives using the same letter, so if
you want to swap letters between two drives it should make sense to
you that three steps are involved. You don't necessarily have to
assign a temporary letter like you did; you could just as easily
assign no letter at all in the first step, but it's still going to be
three steps to swap two drive letters.

It never occurred to me to not assign a drive letter. I'll have to
remember that, although if you end up needing two or more drives with no
drive letter, you might forget which is which.

I'm never asked to reboot in that situation.

Maybe I didn't have to reboot, but there was something I was attempting
to do, and it was disallowed all in one session. Possibly I only had
to quit disk management, and I chose to reboot. I honestly don't
remember the details.

I think you meant to say that most computers don't have any floppy
drive at all, let alone a second floppy. IIRC, I dumped my last floppy
drive in 1999.

Just goes to show you how long it's been since I've shopped for new
hardware. For years now, there's been nothing new on the computer
market that interested me.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 8.0.1
Thunderbird 8.0
LibreOffice 3.3.4

 

[Char Jackson]

I'm changing both drive letters and partition sizes at the same time,
not just changing drive letters. If you make a partition smaller, and
there is data in an area of the partition that will no longer be part of
that partition, something has to happen to the data.

EaseUS can change partition sizes and drive letters in one overall
operation.

But it forces you to reboot? I don't think I'd like that.

"Playing with things" meaning trying something you might no normally do,
such as messing with the system partition on the drive.

There's no problem with changing the size of the Windows system
partition. The only limitation (relevant to this discussion) is that
you can't easily change that volume's drive letter.

 

[Char Jackson]

It never occurred to me to not assign a drive letter. I'll have to
remember that, although if you end up needing two or more drives with no
drive letter, you might forget which is which.

Keep in mind that another alternative (rather than assigning a drive
letter or not assigning a letter) is to specify a path in your
filesystem where this volume should show up. You can make all of your
drives (partitions or volumes would be a better term) appear to be one
big volume by attaching them as a path to your system drive. One of
the ways that can be useful is when you're running out of drive
letters.

 

[W. eWatson]

I've been away for several days. I don't see a definitive answer here.
So I'll probably re-install. I did try installing a 2.5.2 version of Win
Python, and found it gave me an error when I tried to execute a large
program I used to use. I followed strict instruction on how to install
the libs to use the program. Either I picked a wrong version of the
program or it had some C: dependency. I think I'll just re-install XP.