I've a problem while reinstalling XP on my laptop:
The XP boot CD perceives the primary partition as D:\ instead of C:\ (which is a recovery partition). How can I convince it that I want my primary partition to be called C:\ without removing the recovery one?

For additional information the laptop is a HP-6530b

Thanx as usual for your time!

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@ErikBauer

It Looks as if the recovery partition is the primary partition thats why its been called C: or you are creating the partition to install to within the XP installer. it shouldnt matter as drive letters are assigned by the OS so windows should call what ever drive it boots from C: so just install it to the correct partition and once its installed the partition letters should be reversed and the recovery partition will be known as D:

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@ErikBauer

Hey erik, been a while since the magazine you let me place as a link on our site.

Wanted to say you could always try installing the latest AROS first, then to install windows after it, and have a duel bootable laptop?

as for your problem, I do apologise that I dont know how to help. But good luck with your problem.

Have you tried Linux Ubuntu or kubuntu before? I used it last time and found it was able to fulfill my requirements after setting it up, but the setup process took a while as I needed to also download various things after the install.

But with it, I found that using wine emulation I was able to still use various windows programs and games, without needing to resort to that OS.

Upto you, whatever you choose, I wish you success.

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@ErikBauer

There are a couple of things I would think about doing, though I don't know if they are the 'correct answer' you are looking for.

I don't know much about that laptop off the top of my head, but the first thing I of course notice is you are trying to use an XP "CD" instead of the recovery partition... is this because it came with Vista or XP home or something and you "CD" is like XP pro or something? I ask as one would normally just boot from the recovery partition to reinstall the OS. XP "CD"s don't usually have any of the drivers etc on there so it's little more work to do it that way.

Assuming you have something like a Vista recovery partition and you want XP back on, then one thing I would think of doing would be to run the recovery partition to install Vista back on to C: then try redoing the XP install. Maybe that will fix any issues the XP CD is running into with the HD.


If it were me though, I'd just burn a set of Recovery DVDs (CDs if it's an older machine) to keep permanently and then when I do the XP install from CD I'd just destroy the C: and the D: partition and do a quick format from the install and you'll have just a C: You'll of course get all the space that D: is taking up and it's kinda nice not to have to deal with a back up partition in the way.


If, on the other hand, you are just trying sort of "reinstall" XP over the top of itself without trying to lose your data and programs, well, then that's a little harder and I'd have no idea why It would think D: is primary over C:. My experience with installing XP though is it will install on what ever partition you tell it, so maybe some more detailed information on the problem would help us too.

Anyway, couple of things to try depending on what is going on there.

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Thanks for your answers. I'll try to explain it with more details:

The problem started with the XP installation of the Laptop becoming quite unusable and unstable. So decided to backup data and then format/reinstall the OS.
I'm not so much used in reinstalling Laptops so I figured out the same solution I would apply to a Desktop workstation would have worked: putting in the XP setup CD (that came with the laptop itself), follow the usual formatting -> installing routine and then install the drivers.

To my big surprise XP detected the main partition as D\: during the formatting phase and kept calling it D:\ even when installed.
That might not be a problem for Windows itself (I know it can run on whatever partition you install it upon) but it is for some third party programs I must use for job, those have some serious problems running if windows is not installed in C:\ (I know...bad programming, but I can't help)

Now that you suggest me I might just burn the two extra partitions to a recovery DVD and just erase them or maybe boot from the recovery partition itself and see what happens.

I'll keep however wondering if there is some way to tell that stupid OS how to call the partitions instead of doing it by itself...

_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. The ones that understand binary code and the ones that don't

God created Paula so that Allister Brimble and David Whittaker could do music.

@ErikBauer

You could use Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management to change the letter of your recovery partition to, for example, X:

Then you could use notepad to create a file called makec.bat in you Startup strat menu folder and put the following line in it:

Quote:

SUBST C: D:

This should make a carbon-copy of drive D as drive C

@ErikBauer

Use fdisk and set the active partition to be your main one? I would guess the recovery parition should be hidden normally?

If you dont know how to get to fdisk there are equivalent versions on the UBCD.

@ErikBauer

Are you sure it's the recovery partition which has become C: ? I ask because the recovery partition should be completely invisable to Windows. Only if you press a certain key combination during BIOS startup, it should be made visible and boot.

Or did you change it to become visible ? Then you should change it back to hidden before you install Windows.

I had the very same problem with an USB card reader which was permanently connected to the motherboard. Its slots were marked C: and D: and the Windows partition became E:, although it was the very first (and only) partition on the very first HDD. I had to reinstall with USB disabled in BIOS, then it installed to C:.

Bye,
Thomas

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@thomas

Well, on HP's the recovery partition is visible. Used to work at GeekSquad (BestBuy) and people would put files on the D: drive all the time and then start getting warnings that there HD was almost full. They'd come back in yelling, "Hey that salesman told me 300GB would be plenty of space, now 2 days later it's almost full!! You guys are crooks!!" lol!


Anyway, we used to run into this problem sometimes. There is a way to change the drive letters, but you want to do it on a fresh reinstall as if there are already programs that are set up thinking they "should" be on D: and now you change it to C: that could cause problems..


HERE YOU GO:

Log on as an user which is an Administrator (on XP usually every account is an Admin).
Start Regedt32.exe (not RegEdit that you will do later)
Go to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Click MountedDevices.
On the Security menu, click Permissions.
Verify that Administrators have full control. Change this back when you are finished with these steps.
Quit Regedt32.exe, and NOW start Regedit.exe
Locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Find the drive letter you want to change to (so this should be C: the recovery partition). Look for "\DosDevices\C:".
Right-click \DosDevices\C:, and then click Rename.

Note You must use Regedit instead of Regedt32 to rename this registry key.
Rename it to an unused drive letter (like Z for example) "\DosDevices\Z:".

This frees up drive letter C.
Find the drive letter you want changed(so now we are going to make D: to C: like it should be). Look for "\DosDevices\D:".
Right-click \DosDevices\D:, and then click Rename.
Rename it to the appropriate (new) drive letter "\DosDevices\C:".
Click the value for \DosDevices\Z:, click Rename, and then name it back to "\DosDevices\D:".
Quit Regedit,

Now star Regedt32.exeagain...
Change the permissions back to the previous setting for Administrators (this should probably be Read Only).
Restart the computer.

NOTE: Make sure everything is backed up as who the heck knows with Windows. This should work fine, but I'm not giving any guarantees!!!

_________________
A3000D (16mhz, 2MB Chip, 4MB Fast, SCSI (300+MB), SuperGen Genlock, Kick 3.1)
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Back in my day, we didn't have water. We only had Oxygen & Hydrogen, & we'd just shove 'em together

@ErikBauer

If I understand correctly, this happens because when you run the installation, it already finds the recovery partition. So it gives the name C to it, and XP is installed in a new partition you create (and it is called D).
What I do is, I run the install, I create the partition to install XP but I stop the install process after I created the partition. I then reboot and restart the installation.
Now it finds already 2 partitions and it calls them C and D. So now the system is correctly installed in C.

Alternative solution (not tested):
You could use Partition manager to hide the recovery partition. Install XP and unhide the partition again.

Last edited by elwood on 20-Jun-2009 at 11:22 PM.

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