[Jerold]

I installed a brand spanking new HDD into a machine. Used the XP setup disk to format the HDD and ran thru the complete installation. It as too late before I noticed that the boot drive was designated as F instead of C. I thought it had to do with the way the IDE cables or the power plug are sequenced inside, but apparently you cannot change the drive letter for the boot drive. It is not too late to re do the install, but how can I designate HDD as C instead of F. I don't even know why it would do that.

Would there be any problems with keeping the boot drive as F instead of C? I am giving this PC to someone since I don't need it, but I have never had the boot drive other than C before.

Thanks,
Jerold

 

[Anthony:-P]

Hi,
I don't see why there would be any problems with F being the boot drive, other than causing confusion for the person receiving it.
My advice, label F as system or something.
Kind Regards
Anthony

 

[Old Rich]

If you decided to reinstall, disconnect any removable drives ( Zip or Flash drive adaptors ) and/or any other hard drives for the installation

 

[Jerold]

I was going to run Setup again and I had the setup boot screen up, when I decided to try a repair. When it looked for an existing insance of XP, it indicated that Windows was installed on the C drive. I let it run tru and when I booted into Windows, it was still F.

I have a HDD, a Zip (internal) and 2 optical drives. Should I unplug zip IDE and power cable and try the install? The 2 optical drives didn't have any issues with the lettering. the main issue was the Zip was C and the HDD got bumped down to F. The cd drived were fine with D and E.

 

[Old Rich]

Should I unplug zip IDE and power cable and try the install?

Yep . . that is the culprit . . for reasons known only to 'lil Billy Gates, when XP encounters a Zip drive it assigns C to that . . then moves down the line to assign the drive letter for the HDD . . irritating . . but once you know, it's easy to avoid

 

[Jerold]

THanks!!!

Another tid bit to add to my list f things to remember.

 

[Rich-M]

Same thing happens if you have more than one hard drive so I always unplug everything except 1 hard drive for initial install.