Drive Letter

Dear Sirs,

I had to add another hard disk to my system. I made my 20G. the slave and my new 80G the master. I changed the operating system on the new 80 to xp pro from xp home. The new 80g boot drive though, is coming up as the E local drive and the slave is still saying c: drive is there a way for me to rename them. I want to make the 80g to be the drive letter C and the 20g to be the E. Thanks for your time..

JJ

 

There is no way to (successfully) change the drive letter of the system partition. Since you are still at the beginning of this process, the easiest thing to do would be to disconnect all drives except your new one and install XP Pro to it while there are no other drives attached so that C: is the first unused drive letter.

 

Drive Letters

Couple of questions - maybe obvious:
1. Did you physically change the jumpers on the drives to be master and slave properly?
2. Did you do a 'from scratch' install of WinXP Pro?

Microsoft has a tool you can use to change drive letters (other than C. It's called diskmgmt.msc, a control console. It's helpful when changing CD drive letters to something down the alphabet (mine are Q and R), and for changing the letter of any non-boot partition on a hard drive. Check it out - may do the trick for you.

 

What happened to D: ?

This is at least the 2nd post of this type I have read today. Can we maybe find a cause ?

Why is this happening ?

My ( wild or other wise ) idea is that the machine is being booted for the HD and not from A POWER OFF state directly to the XP CDROM.

Unless I am way off base and/or thinking wrong, booting in the above manner XP ( or all versions of Windows as far as I know ) will directly by default to C:/Windows. And overwrites what is there. This can not be done properly if anything is in use. Then the restart takes over.

A similiar problem came up wih Win98 if the machine was booted from the HD to run the re-install. The only difference that I can see is that 98 would create a new Windows folder ie: C:/Windows001. And if done agian it would make C:/Window002. XP apparently goes to a different drive ( partition )

Also when the machine is booted from the HD there may well be some part of Windows Running. You can not repair the engine with the engine running. I have tried it. And got BURNED badly. ( Win98FE )

When The machine is booted directly to the CD ( or in 98 the floppy ) it does not even know there is an existing Windows. And again the Install should go to C:\Windows by default. Has that changed ?

And from what I have read ( and was told to be carefull of ) YOU SHOULD NOT let the HD be formated if you are going overtop of another OS.

I ask this questions ( or post these ideas ) as I have put 98FE over 95, which is supposed to be a NO-NO. 98SE over that. And XP Pro over that. And have done two repair installs since then. ( the 2nd wasn't needed ) it did not fix my just plain worn out Mouse which was the FULL cause of problems.

Also I believe one case today XP was put over 2K. This one was put over XP Home. Could that have something to do with the problems ?

BillyBob

 

I either missed or paid no attention to the above. Jumpers will cause problems too.

But I have heard of this problem where no HD changes were made.

BillyBob

 

This one Is the other one I was refering to that involved 2K.

BB

 

In reading through other problems ( such as the External HD ) Could there possibley be a mixture of NTFS and Fat32 involved and causing problems for an overtop upgraded ?

I will deffinetly need to wait for others on this as I have never used NTFS. The biggest reason is that this machine needs to be reached from the other two Win98 machines via the LAN.

BillyBob

 

FYI, BillyBob, the file system you use is not relevant on a LAN. You could have used NTFS for your XP and the Win98 LAN members would see it just fine.

 

Looks like another one

Is there something common gound here ?

I think so. But have no idea what.

I did not think that 98SE (fat32) would read XP NTFS files. But If I only used NTFS on the C: drive here then I guess it would not matter. Plus I have no reason to use NTFS. All of my partitions a re well under 32gig.

BillyBob

 

It can't on the same computer. As dude stated though, across a network is a different matter. Think about this. This board is running on Linux but your computer (windows) is able to understand what it's saying.

 

Well, Well, Another day not wasted.

It appears as though I have learned something new. But let me see if I got it right. Not too much use right now but who knows what I just might attempt to do in the future.

Computer Bob has XP PRO with one or more partitions formated NTFS.

Computer Nancy has Win98SE.

Both are on MsHome LAN.

So if I am now understanding correctly Nancy can ( see ) read and use what is on Bobs' NTFS partitions.

And we could still play our LAN games as we do now using IP addresses ?

Question.

How about transfering things back and forth the way I do now ? A lot of time I will download stuff on one machine and then transfer/copy it to the other. I see no reason to download twice.

I hadn't given it much thought but I will now. ANd it does make sense.

Thank you guys.

BillyBob

 

The machines on a LAN just see files--not file systems. Whether a file is stored on an NTFS partition or an Ext2FS partition is kind of like the comparison between storing a paper file in a drawer or a filing cabinet. The file itself is exactly the same regardless of how it is stored.

And machines using NTFS exclusively can transfer files to machines using any other file system without the slightest problem, and vice versa.

 

Thanks.

Another page added to the book of learning.

BillyBob

 

BillyBob, you'll either find an explanation of the TCP/IP protocol very interesting or it will put you to sleep, either way a purpose is served.

It's the most commonly used protocol and the one you are using on your LAN.