Drive Assignment Problems

Okay guys, I have been working with computers for a loooong time now and have NEVER seen this problem:

I just installed a new hard drive and XP Home on it for a friend. Here's the drive setup... IDE Controller #1: The Hard Drive; IDE Controller #2: Zip Drive, CD-ROM drive.

. First, yes I am totally sure of which controller is which. Even on bootup the screen indicates that the primary master is the HD, and the secondary master is the CD, the secondary slave is the zip....

. Here's the problem: When I was alll done installing the OS for her, XP had decided that the first HD should be called "E:" and the Zip "C:" and the CD "D: "

. How the heck does this happen? I've never seen it before, and some older programs are giving her trouble because they want to automatically install to "C:" etc..

. I can fix it myself w/ partition magic and drivemapper, but does anyone know of an easier solution to arrange the drives in their proper order?

. Any help would be entirely appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

I apparently had something similar happen as I had a 6-in-1 card USB card reader attached when I loaded XP on a multiboot. I was expecting XP to be D. It came out F.

I don't know if you can get XP back to C:\. But you can probably move the optical drives down the chain. WIth no C:\ or D:\, the programs may default to E:\.

When I install on a dual boot, progams usually find the booted drive.

 

How about Control Panel>Administrative tools>computer management>Disk Management.

Right click on the drive and select "change drive letter and paths ".

 

I am certainly not as experienced as the others, but I think I can solve your "ZIP ending up as C." I too had this problem until someone mentioned to me that upon installing a new hard drive you need to disconnect the ZIP from the system and add it later as it will be the first to be recognized on setup and will most always be assigned to C drive. Why I don't have the least idea.

I did what was suggested and the hard drive came up as "C ", later connected the ZIP and it came up as D, just as I wanted.

If all else fails, you might try this. It sure worked for me.