Re-naming primary partition

[Visitor No 3]

I've just done a clean re-install of WinXP Home and have finished up with my
primary disc, windows programme disc, as drive D. which I don't want but am
a bit reluctant to mess with.

I have a sata 200 Gb drive which was formatted into two halves. Drive c was
windows and other programmes, drive d was data files. I had problems with
NVIDIA drivers which wouldn't go away so I zapped drive c , reformatted it
and re-installed winXP. When the dust settled it finished up as drive d and
the old drive d, data disc, is now drive c. This may or may not cause
confusion in the future since many applications assume that Drive c is the
root drive.

I don't know this but I assume that when windows installed, it hard coded
the path of all its constituent parts in the registry to drive d and this
would cause me much grief if I just renamed the two partitions.

I am not keen to start from scratch and reformat both partitions and
re-install Windows again so can anybody give me a steer on what the best way
forward might be.

Many thanks.

 

[Guest]

With a hd in several partitions,you should have all but the partition for
C: in a "raw" format when installing windows.After windows is installed,
simply format the others.

 

[Visitor No 3]

<< With a hd in several partitions,you should have all but the partition for
C: in a "raw" format when installing windows.After windows is installed,
simply format the others.>>

That worked fine.

Thanks

Ian Millward
Edinburgh

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

With a hd in several partitions,you should have all but the partition for
C: in a "raw" format when installing windows.After windows is installed,
simply format the others.

That may help, but shouldn't be (and usually isn't) necessary. It's a
good thing to try here, though, because there may be some content
(volume label or serial number, particular files, etc.) in the volumes
other than what should be C: that is making them appear to be C:

Also, make sure you don't leave any removable disks, USB sticks, etc,.
in place when you install Windows (other than the Windows CD).

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Drugs are usually safe. Inject? (Y/n)

 

[meherlahashbaz]

With a hd in several partitions,you should have all but the partition for
C: in a "raw" format when installing windows.After windows is installed,
simply format the others.

I differ with you on that. My experience is that all other
partitions stay as the format they were in. NTFS, FAT32,
etc. The only one that is 'RAW' is the system, and only if
you deleted the old partition. Then in reinstalling the OS
that partition is reformatted before installing. The letters
should NOT change, unless somehow the system rebooted during
the initial delete partition, and remake partition. If that
happened, then you should NOT change the letters. Names can
vary (Ex. thielsen, nelsen, etc.), but usually not the
letters. In the programs themselves, the data folders/drives
can be set for the letter (in this case C, then the
specific folder/subfolder on that logical drive, providing
that drive isn't corrupted.