On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:56:07 -0400, Sid Elbow <here@there.com> wrote:
>Andy wrote:
>
>> What unexpected drive letters? If you look at the Windows setup screen
>> that shows the drives and their partitions, the drive letters that are
>> shown next to the partitions are the same drive letters those
>> partitions will have in the installed Windows.
>
>Perhaps "unexpected" is the wrong word - "inconvenient" might be more to
>the point.
>
>Lets say you currently have a C-partition (containing a bootable OS).
>You decide to dump the OS on C: and install Win2K in its place.
>
>So you boot to the Win2K CD and use the option to delete the partition
>on C: If you then immediately create a new partition and continue the
>install, the new install partition won't be created as C: (because C:
>was existing and enumerated when you booted and the Win2K install
>doesn't re-use the drive letter - it simply picks the next available
>letter).
I've never seen that happen. When you delete the C: partition, the
drive letter is freed. If you immediately recreate it, the partition
becomes C: again.
>
>This isn't an actual problem but it's a bit "inconvenient" to have an OS
>who's boot partition and all path references are to, say, E: (not to
>mention that some application installs still seem to assume C: as the
>location for, say, <Program Files> instead of actually checking).
>
>The solution usually recommended is to reboot the install immediately
>after deleting the original C-partition so that the drive is
>re-enumerated. However, I thought I had heard that the XP installation
>takes care of this by re-allocating the drive letter after partition
>deletion .... but I'm not sure.
Doing that is a recipe for making the primary partition not C: if
there are other existing partitions. When you restart Windows setup,
it will assign drive letters beginning with C: to the already existing
partitions, so when you recreate the primary partition it will not be
C:.
Unless you want to change the partition size, there is no reason to
delete the partition. Just select the partition to install Windows,
and you will be offered the option to format the partition before file
copying begins.