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Why is the boot drive letter not C: after installing Windows XP on a blank drive?

The Windows setup process did not assign drive letter C: to the hard drive during the Windows XP/2000/NT installation process. WHY did this happen?

During the installation of Windows XP (2000 and NT use the same process) after a BLANK hard disk drive has been installed in the system, the setup process does not AUTOMATICALLY assign drive letter C: to the HDD. This can happen because an existing hard drive partition was not detected by setup and one of the following:

1. There is a Media Card Reader in the system
2. There is a Zip Drive in the system
3. There is a USB Flash Drive connected to the system
4. There is a USB Printer connected to the system that has a media card reader
5. There is an External Hard Drive connected to the system

If, any of these devices are in the system, setup will assign drive letter C: to one of these devices and then the hard disk drive (HDD) ends up with drive letter H or such. The boot drive letter in and of itself is not a big deal. Anyone with a multi-boot system like mine at home is familiar with non-C: boot drives and they per se cause no problems (You just have to know the drive letter of your boot drive).

To prevent this from happening, boot to your Windows CD and run the setup thru the creation and formatting of the hard drive. Power the system off manually, then restart the Windows installation. The partition you created on the last install will be detected and assigned drive letter C:

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The drive is recognised in the computer on the disk management area of windows however right clicking to change the mapping of the drive does not work as it says the disk management needs refreshing or restarting however when this is done the problem still stands. The WD elements drive cannot be located on windows on my desktop so i cannot open it. Any ideas would be gratefully received, thank you :-)
Before the operating system can recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter, you must partition and format the drive. This article explains.

Before the operating system can recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter, you must partition and format the drive. New hard drives are rarely pre-partitioned by the manufacturer. There are three options to formatting and partitioning the drive:

1. (Recommended) Seagate's DiscWizard utility is compatible with all Windows operating systems. The DiscWizard utility is a fast and easy way to format a drive.

2. FDISK is compatible with Windows 9x, Me. Please refer to Microsoft's knowledge base article Q255867 for instructions on FDISK.

3. Disk Management is compatible in Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 7.
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Oct 07, 2013 • Western Digital Elements Computers &...
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could someone help with the following: I am trying to replace the hard drive in a dimension 9150 and also add a second (storage) hard drive. sata drives I have connected 1 drive and installed XP from start disc. But when it had all configured, the letter for my main drive was 'I' not 'C'. (there was a C-D-E-F- cdrom G - dvdrom H and then my hard drive I) I have disabled 'USB connections C to F', renamed roms E + F, rebooted, but my main drive is still 'I' Also when I connected the other drive I couldn't see it at all. How do I get my main drive to letter C, and how do I get to see my other hard drive. both drives are sata drives. when I go to the bios and switch on all drive connections and restart, it comes up with a fault and to press F1 to continue of F2 to enter bios. I then switch off drive connections and all is OK when start up. Do these connections not need to be on to see my other drive. thanks in advance.
when installing XP to a blank HDD, that has no existing partition, If windows detects other drives (another HDD that has a partition, USB Thumbdrive, zip drive ot media card reader (I suspect your system has a 4 in one card reader) then XP install will see those drives and assign them drive letters and then assign the new partition created C: To avoid this, the simplest step is after creating the new partition on the new hdd in the XP install process, reboot the system and start the XP install again, this time it will see an existing partition on the new HDD and assign it drive letter C:
If you have already installed XP., I have found no SUCCESSFUL way to change the drive letter of the boot drive other than re-installing Windows.
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Nov 26, 2010 • Dell Computers & Internet
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ntldr is missing, iWill P4, 478 pin motherboard.
  1. Use the Windows XP Setup disks to restart the computer, or use the Windows XP CD-ROM to restart the computer.
  2. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to repair the Windows XP installation.
  3. Press C to repair the Windows XP installation by using the Recovery Console.
  4. Type the number that corresponds to the Windows installation that you want to repair, and then press ENTER. For example, type 1, and then press ENTER.
  5. Type the Administrator password, and then press ENTER.
  6. Type map, and then press ENTER. Note the drive letter that is assigned to the CD-ROM drive that contains the Windows XP CD-ROM.
  7. Type the following commands, pressing ENTER after you type each one, where drive is the drive letter that you typed in step 4 of "Method 2: Use the Recovery Console," of this article: copy drive:\i386\ntldr c:\

    copy drive:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\If you are prompted to overwrite the file, type y, and then press ENTER.
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Jun 08, 2009 • Nokia 3110 Cellular Phone
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cannot find hard drive while installing MS XP on a hp nc6220 laptop.
hi
It used to happen like this during the new installation.
goto BIOS setup and check that the HDD is correctely detected. check the size it reported. If its correct, give one more try. else the HDD firmware is corrupted and can be repaired.
thank you
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Aug 15, 2008 • Microsoft Windows XP Professional for PC
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ntldr is missing on my windows millennium pc
Hi,

Here is a great guide explaining how to restore the NTLDR file.
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Dec 30, 2007 • Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional for PC
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