Drive Letters in Win XP

[AlfAlmeida]

I have upgraded from Win98SE to Windows XP Home Edition SP2 (Upgrade CD) and have a problem with my drive letters.

I started with a new hard drive which I FDisk(ed) and formatted. I'm not sure, but I might have inadvertantly chosen to have a DOS partition as well. This has resulted in the following disk letters as shown in the Computer Management window:

.......................C:.......................E:
Layout.................Partition..............Partition
Type...................Basic...................Basic
File Sys................FAT....................NTFS
Status.................Healthy (System)..Healthy (Boot)
Capacity..............8MB....................38.28GB
Free Space...........7MB....................35.66GB

(D: is a separate drive for data)

In the rectangular graphical representation, Disk 0 is shown as Basic 39.29GB Online.
C: Has a dark blue band described as a Primary Partition
E: Has a light blue band and a green frame described as an Extended Partition/Logical Drive(?)

I cant'd see that I have any need for the C: partition and would like to get rid of it if it is not required. When I try to change the drive letter, I get the message "Windows cannot modify the drive letter of your system volume or boot volume". I fear there are going to be problems when I start installing programs, as most of these refer to C: and Windows. But E: is really my main and Windows drive.

Is the C: partition really necessary, and if not, how can it be removed. Once it's gone, will it be possible to change E: to C:? I would like E: to be the C: drive.

Some good soul please enlighten me!

[grievingexistence]

Just start over and reinstall xp and windows. You don't need to use Fdisk, you do the partitioning and reformatting with xp during the setup process.

[AlfAlmeida]

I'm afraid your suggestion has not worked, g. I keep getting the message that "there is not enough space in C: drive and that 14MB are required". I have tried both the Upgrade and Reinstallation, with the same result, and the installation aborts. I do not get the opportunity to repartition my drive! Any other suggestion, please?

[Kov-Ice]

Alf, which drive letter is your Windows XP folder under, C or E?

Either way, I don't believe you can change the drive letter of a primary partition (your C). Also, unless you still have 98 installed, there's no need for your file system to be FAT32. For XP, it's recommended to use the NTFS system. You can change the file system from FAT to NTFS, but that may not help your letter situation.

Why is there so little space available on the drives?

[Cricket]

Do you have any card readers installed on your computer? If you do, disconnect them from the motherboard until after you get Windows installed.

You may have to wipe the hard drive clean before you reinstall Windows. You can use a zero fill utility like Darik's Boot And Nuke or KillDisk.

This page may help you with the Windows installation.

Cricket

[AlfAlmeida]

Kov-Ice, XP is installed on E: because it would not install in C: which is only 8MB capacity with 7MB free. However, Explorer does not show anything in C:, it is empty! I want to make clear that the disk does NOT contain WIN 98, it is a brand new disk, which I obviously made the mistake of Fdisking and formatting (ending up with two partitions) before installing XP. D: is a separate drive for data purposes.

[faulkner132]

If you have any existing partitions when you install XP, it will use the next letter as your root drive. Example being if you format and the setup program shows you having an existing partition on another drive your system partition will be D. It's best to remove any hard drive except for the one you are installing Windows on during the installation to prevent this.

[glc]

You need to start over with a zeroed drive. Do NOT install Win98 - you can use the upgrade XP clean, just have a 98 CD ready to put in the drive when the XP setup looks for the previous version of Windows.

[AlfAlmeida]

I am glad to report success. For the record, after a lot of trying and finally ignoring the warnings by WinXP about not being able to start my PC if I deleted partitions, I managed to delete the two partitions C: and E: on Disk 0, during the initial installation process. Everything went quite well after that and I now only have drive C: with Windows XP installed!

Many thanks to all you kind guys who helped.