XP makes harddrive drive F?

[dakota81]

I gave Windows XP a whirl, and it didn't quite impress me, mainly because it assigned my harddrive as drive letter F. Has anyone else seen this? It became exceptionally frustrating trying to install anything when everything defaults the install directory, working directory, everything directory related, they default to the C drive, which in my case was an optical drive... and that's the other thing, I don't have an optical drive in my system...

Has anyone else seen this happen with installing XP?

 

[Ecaboodle]

Did your computer have any other systems on it before you installed XP? If you can't fix it in 20 call someone who can.

 

[dakota81]

No, I copied all my data onto a second harddrive, deleted the partition of my primary drive, and let XP setup format the drive with NTFS. Now I'm back to Win98SE, after a whole hour of the eXPerience...

It's just puzzling why XP would make my harddrive letter F, it doesn't make any sense and I certainly don't want to try the OS again until I find out more about why this might have happened. I've got an FIC AD11 mb w/ latest BIOS, if that means anything.

 

[Comtech]

It's extremely easy to assign drive letters.
You could have just opened Administrator tools, Computer mamangment, Disk management, reassigned the (unknown) optical drive to any letter beyond F, reassigned your boot drive to C, then shuffle anything else wherever you like, even removing the phantom drive. Cheers,
Jim

http://members.cnx.net/reboot/

 

[lorenzodv]

Hmm, if I remeber well, you can't change the drive letter of the partition XP resides on.

I had a similar problem... you may try deleting the partition using fdisk and not the XP setup partition manager: it seems to retain drive letters even after deleting partitions.

 

[debonairOne]

In order to understand what the problem is, you must first understand how it works. Windows automatically assigns drive letters in a seemingly logical way. It starts with the Primary IDE Controllers and assigns the devices found at the Master position - C, it then moves to the Secondary IDE Controller and assigns the device found at the Master position - D. It then goes back to the Primary Controller and assigns the Slave position - E and F to the Seconday Controller's Slave device...

Now, in your situation, you need to examine how you have your devices setup.. Bear in mind that this breaks down when you have SCSI devices connected.. Then letters are assigned differently, due to the SCSI Bios...

Debonair...

 

[computron99]

Is there a Zip drive installed either 100 or 250 internal? I had this happen recently. If so remove the zip drive and reinstall WinXP - then reconnect the drive. This may also happen with a 2nd hard drive installed. "The Labor Is Free, It's Your Attitude That Costs $45.00 An Hour!"