wal-mart Posted February 16, 2007 Report Share Posted February 16, 2007 Hello. I have a problem with the installation of my two hard drives. I have a 40GB Seagate IDE HD (windows 2000 installed) and a 186GB Western Digital which has the XP installation. When I'm using my XP OS my drive letter is displayed as a D: drive and my other drive which is not in use is the C: drive. This is a problem because some programs automatically assume C: is my XP's installation and copy files to that drive which is my windows 2000 hd. I tried to resolve this by removing my 40GB IDE from my computer but during boot time, the bios or kernel does not recognize my 186GB with XP, only when my other hd is plugged in is it recognized. Also, in my XP system tray, I have the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, I right click and apparently my 186GB hd is recognized as merely a storage device and it can be removed. Why would I want to remove the hd I'm using?Thanks. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagwoood Posted February 16, 2007 Report Share Posted February 16, 2007 Hello wal-mart and welcome to WF :) The problem is that your drive with XP on is a SATA drive, hence the remove hardware icon in your notification area. When you install XP, it looks for an IDE drive and will label that as C: in preference to a SATA drive, even if that isn't the drive your installing XP onto.I think the only way to cure it is to disconnect the IDE drive when you install onto a SATA drive and it'll then get labled as C:, and once you've installed XP, reconnect the IDE drive.Only problem with that is that you will have problems booting into 2000(I assume you're dual booting), as the boot .ini on your new C: drive wont know you have another windows installation on another drive.HTH, dagwoood. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wal-mart Posted February 16, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2007 So do you suggest that I reinstall xp all over again with my IDE unplugged? I really don't want to have to active windows again for the key can only work for so many times. Do you have any other suggestions?Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagwoood Posted February 18, 2007 Report Share Posted February 18, 2007 Sorry for the delay in getting back to you wal-mart I've just found this http://www.petri.co.il/change_system_drive..._windows_xp.htm It involves some registry editting but it looks like it should do the trick.HTH, dagwoood. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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