Posts Tagged ‘windows’

Help! What has Windows done now?

Posted on in Computers, My Life.
  • So Windows XP was on D: and all my data was on C: (been that way for two years without any issues).
  • Back everything up on C:
  • Install new RAM (mmm, 6GB of goodness)
  • Upgrade to Windows 7
  • Uh oh…

Windows 7 detected the old XP install okay. Windows 7 installed itself okay. Windows 7 decided that the drive it is on should be called C:. Windows 7 only sees one hard driv – no sign of my other drive (it’s still visible at the BIOS level during boot up).

Any ideas? (Except for buy a Mac.) The next step was going to be install Linux (on another partition on the old D:, new C: drive) so I could see if that does anything useful.

Very True Mood: (anxious) anxious
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A drive by any other letter…

Posted on in Computers.

On Thursday my hard drive died. Not the important one, just the one with Windows on it.

So one trip to PC World and many hours spent watching progress bars later… I have an odd situation.

I used to have a C: drive with Windows on it (part of the original configuration of the PC) and an X: drive with all my data (which I had added later). When I inserted the brand new drive in the first bay and started the Windows install it recognised that the drive in the first position was unformatted and the one in the second was formatted. Good stuff, so I told it to format and install on the first drive.

Except now it sees the first drive (the new one with Windows on it) as D: and correctly sees it as the Boot drive, and the second (i.e. the old X: drive with may data on it) as C: and sees it as a System drive.

So far only one program has been stupid enough to install itself to C:\Program Files\ rather than D:\Program Files. And googling the subject brings back lots of advice saying “if Windows installed itself with these drive letters, don’t try to change them”.

I’m not too fussed about C: and D: being the “wrong” way round, but why is D: being seen as a System drive? And what are the possible conseqences?

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