Why is boot drive not c:?

[Rocky]

I know I should google this but it's 0030 and I spent all night installing the new hard drive, and I can't get an internet connect on it, so booting on old drive for now... I'll phone ISP about that tomorrow, but what I want to know here is...

Why is windows not assigning C: to the new boot drive? It's calling the boot drive F, and an old boot drive C:, I thought windows always called the drive it boots on C?

[Rocky]

Did a quick google and funnily enough found lots of other people with Drive F assigned to the boot drive instead of C. Best advice I could find was to just live with it. Wierd though.

[Bonehead]

Had that happen to me once, wierd. Never did figure it out LOL

[Xian Saint]

Hey bro...

Not sure of your setup as far as number of drives and such and how you plan to boot...but I don't know if ignoring it is the right answer...let me explain why...or at least why I didn't like this answer...

I dual boot two drives...both with XP...one is a junk drive and the other is setup for optimum performance...(i.e. the latest drivers and only the games I play often). That way, I can install demos and freeware on my junk drive and not fragment the drive and/or clutter the registry of my game drive.

Well, I had a similar problem to yours...I would boot to my junk drive F: and my game drive would show up as C:...so if I install a program it would try and load it on my C and not my F...which is exactly what I didn't want to happen...

I think it has something to do with the MBR...and I had heard that you could fix it by booting to your OS CD and selecting repair but I didn't do that...I went into admin tools/computer management/disk management (or something like that)...tinkered around in there and somehow got it working...

Now, whatever drive I boot to shows up as the C drive...and I can tell the difference between my game and junk drive by their name (which never changes).

I probably confused you even more...hope not tho...heh heh.

[Rocky]

Not confused, I'm with ya. My problem isn't as bad as yours was though, because when I install new software it is actually defaulting to F, which is the boot drive where I want programmes installed anyway.

I did read about using the Computer Management system to change drive letters, but there was a warning about apps not installing to the correct place, and not being able to reassign the boot drive, so I think I'll just live with f drive as a boot drive now.

I think it must be something that affects systems with more than one HD, and more than one installation of XP across the drives.

[CR6]

Did a quick google and funnily enough found lots of other people with Drive F assigned to the boot drive instead of C. Best advice I could find was to just live with it. Wierd though.

I wouldn't live with it!

You can try to install XP on your new HD with all your other HDs disconnected. Once XP is installed, then plug in your other HDs and that should work.

[Rocky]

Did a quick google and funnily enough found lots of other people with Drive F assigned to the boot drive instead of C. Best advice I could find was to just live with it. Wierd though.

I wouldn't live with it!

You can try to install XP on your new HD with all your other HDs disconnected. Once XP is installed, then plug in your other HDs and that should work.

Yeh that is the totally wierd thing! That's what I did. No other drives were connected when I installed XP on that new drive.

[Rocky]

Okay I am determined to get my Western Digital (WD) boot drive as c, but it aint easy.

I took out all the drives and only left the new WD 250Gb drive plugged in, to SATA 1. I rebooted and it still called the only drive in the machine F!

So I took a look in bios, to me this doesn't look right...

Primary IDE Master [Not Detected]

Primary IDE Slave [Not Detected]

Secondary IDE Master Plextor DVD

Secondary IDE Slave [Not Detected]

Third IDE Master WD 250Mb

Fourth IDE Master [Not Detected]

Shouldn't the WD250Gb (which is configured as the 1st boot device in bios) be listed as the Primary IDE Master? I am thinking this is where the issue is?

The only other relevant thing in the bios was Configure SATA as RAID is set to No, but as I am not running a RAID that would seem right.

And as XP found and installed on the new SATA drive without an issue, I don't think it can be anything to do with SATA drivers.

[GreyHaired]

Rocky, the "IDE" is for ATA disks, not SATA disks so that part of the BIOS is OK.

So what you did is remove all other drives, incl. possible USB drives, leaving only the SATA, format it, install Windows and it still says "F" drive?

I must check this out, as it beats me.

Edit: Oops, don't know if the Plextor "Master" is mixing things up?

[Rocky]

So what you did is remove all other drives, incl. possible USB drives, leaving only the SATA, format it, install Windows and it still says "F" drive?

Yes, exactly. I didn't want windows installer picking any information up from other installations on the other drives, so I phsyically removed all the drives from the tower and only had the new WD S-ATA installed during the entire XP install procedure.

I'm at the point now that I think I'll just format that partition again, and go through the whole install process again.

[GreyHaired]

I read that the boot order must be:

floppy

cdrom

SATA

I don't know if the Plextor intervenes so you can set that as "Slave" rather than "Master". When doing so, use the middle connector on the cable as the one in the far end is for a master disk.

[Xian Saint]

HAH...I knew you wouldn't "live with it"...heh heh...

I'm no Super Bob (where is he when you need him)...but this is what I think...

The Master Boot Record (MBR) is created when the disk is partitioned. The MBR contains a small amount of executable code called the master boot code, the disk signature, and the partition table for the disk. At the end of the MBR is a 2-byte structure called a signature word or end of sector marker, which is always set to 0x55AA. A signature word also marks the end of an extended boot record (EBR) and the boot sector.

When you start a computer from the hard disk, the system BIOS code identifies the startup disk and reads the MBR. The master boot code in the MBR searches for the active, primary partition on the hard disk. Occasionally the MBR can become corrupted. This can be caused by human error, hardware problems, power fluctuations, viruses, and other factors.

Note

• You can also use the Recovery Console to rewrite the MBR to resolve a corrupted MBR on a startup disk.

Process of fixing seems fairly easy...boot to Windows CD, type R for Recovery, logon (normally just hit enter unless you have password), type FIXMBR, confirm, reboot...voila.

Sounds simple...then again, what do I know...

*DISCLAIMER*

Use at your own risk.

[Rocky]

I'm not sure the MBR is corrupt, everything is fine apart from the way it is assigning drive letters.

What I think I'll do is wait until the weekend, reformat the boot partition, remove all other drives, then do a fresh install. This time I will pay special attention to when the drive lettering changes from C to F, i.e. which HD connections is causing the re-designation, by installing the other HDs one at a time and rebooting.

At risk of getting sidetracked, I noticed somehting equally as strange. I installed a new copy of AVG anti-virus on the new drive, but tonight I notice it has 150Mb of virus's in its "vault" dating back to 2004! How can a clean install have a history like that, unless it is somehow reading the virus data off the old HD for some reason.

Oh man, I never had these problems before lol!

[Phlookian]

I'm a long way from being a computer genius, but I thought you could rename disks:

control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management: right click on the offending item: change drive letter and paths.

PLease note that I live approx 1000 miles from you so if your pc has a coronary, you've got a long journey to get some payback

[Rocky]

I'm a long way from being a computer genius, but I thought you could rename disks:

control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management: right click on the offending item: change drive letter and paths.

Yes, you can try that, but there are a couple of caveats. MS don;t gaurantee all your installed apps will function properly, and you cannot rename the boot drive.

[Phlookian]

Well........

That's what I get for takin' on Yoda

[GreyHaired]

At risk of getting sidetracked, I noticed somehting equally as strange. I installed a new copy of AVG anti-virus on the new drive, but tonight I notice it has 150Mb of virus's in its "vault" dating back to 2004! How can a clean install have a history like that, unless it is somehow reading the virus data off the old HD for some reason.

Oh man, I never had these problems before lol!

It's because a standard format does do the job in-depth.

With a program like "Getdataback" you can restore many files that have been deleted from a hard disk.

There are programs around to "zero all data" as it's called.

One of them is "Killdisk": http://www.killdisk.com/

and info about similar utilities: http://www.thefreecountry.com/security/securedelete.shtml

That'll clear your AVG vault. Use at own risk and study the guides/manuals coz those programs don't compromise.

Speaking of AVG/antivirus, there's a new test result of all major AV programs from virus.gr:

http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/defaul...d=82&mnu=82

[Foxtrot360]

Not sure if this is related. But i had a problem with C Drive not being the default Drive, XP repair fixed it though.

Edited September 14, 2006 by Foxtrot23

[DonMiguel]

Rocky, this often happens with computers that have a card media reader in them. The install process enumerates these "removable disk drives" before the ATA drives and thus you get a F:, G:, H:. Could it be you have thumb/external drives connected, or a card reader.

Either way, you can use the recovery console to rebuild the MBR and boot.ini files...and if you have to have a copy of WinPE you can just use diskpart to change this

Usually this sequence will change over the letter assignment using diskpart: (usually, but not always, you may have to choose other "disks" or "partitions" from this here)

sel dis 0

sel par 1

assign letter=c

active

exit

after that if you run the recover console (boot with XP CD and at first prompt use 'R' and tell it which windows to use). Then using FixMBR and BootCFG utilities, you should be able to rebuild back to C:

hope that helps.

BTW, there are some Linux based utilies that will fix up this sort of thing too, but I haven't used them in a while and am not sure the old ones would support SATA (without PATA support) (i.e. you need the "RAID" drivers to load for file system access)

good luck

[Rocky]

Rocky, this often happens with computers that have a card media reader in them. The install process enumerates these "removable disk drives" before the ATA drives and thus you get a F:, G:, H:. Could it be you have thumb/external drives connected, or a card reader.

Either way, you can use the recovery console to rebuild the MBR and boot.ini files...and if you have to have a copy of WinPE you can just use diskpart to change this

Usually this sequence will change over the letter assignment using diskpart: (usually, but not always, you may have to choose other "disks" or "partitions" from this here)

sel dis 0

sel par 1

assign letter=c

active

exit

after that if you run the recover console (boot with XP CD and at first prompt use 'R' and tell it which windows to use). Then using FixMBR and BootCFG utilities, you should be able to rebuild back to C:

hope that helps.

BTW, there are some Linux based utilies that will fix up this sort of thing too, but I haven't used them in a while and am not sure the old ones would support SATA (without PATA support) (i.e. you need the "RAID" drivers to load for file system access)

good luck

Hmm, I do have "removable media" listed in My Computer, but they have been assigned U: and V: , I think that is either the card reader build into my floppy drive, or more likely the card in the digi camera docking station, and the card in the Palm docking station.

What I might do is try simply redesignating the drive letters using Disk Management in the Control Panel, if that doesn't work I guess I'll need to try the MBR fix you and Saint suggested.

Does anyone know, does reformating a partition remove the info in the MBR? What I am wondering is if worst comes to wos and I do a clean install, would reformatting the new boot drive while booted on an old HD remvong the F: drive designation, or would I end up with a clean install still called F?

@all Thanks for the help.

[GreyHaired]

Does anyone know, does reformating a partition remove the info in the MBR? What I am wondering is if worst comes to wos and I do a clean install, would reformatting the new boot drive while booted on an old HD remvong the F: drive designation, or would I end up with a clean install still called F?

@all Thanks for the help.

My guess is it’ll still show “F” as your bootsector is confused. Maybe someone can correct this but otherwise:

Last shot before I run out of suggestions:

Boot on Win XP cd and enter recovery console

Log on to the Windows partition that pops up.

Type (always without quotes): “fixmbr” and press Enter

Type “fixboot c:” press Enter

Type “bootcfg /rebuild”

Under “OS load options”, type: “fastdetect”.

Good luck.

[element11]

At risk of getting sidetracked, I noticed somehting equally as strange. I installed a new copy of AVG anti-virus on the new drive, but tonight I notice it has 150Mb of virus's in its "vault" dating back to 2004! How can a clean install have a history like that, unless it is somehow reading the virus data off the old HD for some reason.

Oh man, I never had these problems before lol!

Just FYI, you may have to format your hard drive up to seven times before enough data is permanently erased to make everything unworkable.