Making the C: my master drive

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sobeit
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Location: Clifton Park, NY
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Making the C: my master drive

Post by sobeit »

Hello people and hope you had a good X-Mas and a Happy New Year.
I've been working with this HP and have a new MB installed, load the XP Pro in the OS and now I can get into windows and onto the internet, but when ever i go to download anything the H: drive is a factory drive and only has 9 GB of space. I have 490GB on the C: drive and I want to make that my main drive. The H: drive will not let me browse to the C: drive and download to it.
Please help me to make the C: drive my master drive, I know nothing of using the Partition so please explain the steps if that is what I need to do.
Thanks and hope I explained well enough for you to understand my question. I know HP is not the best computer and it is a desktop but this is what I'm presently working on.
Thanks again and please any suggestions is a good suggestion.
Tony
sobeit
Posts: 38
Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:19 am
Location: Clifton Park, NY
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Re: Making the C: my master drive

Post by sobeit »

I learned a couple things along the way about my question. When I go into "Administrators Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management", I see that the H:Factory system is The (Boot) and the C: is labeled (System).
Now the question is "How can I switch the two"?
Please help!!!
Thanks,
Tony
reloadron
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Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 8:57 am
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
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Re: Making the C: my master drive

Post by reloadron »

Hi Tony

For a Windows XP operating system some of this does not make sense. Let's simplify and try to make some sense out of what you have.

On the desktop right click My Computer and choose Manage from the drop down menu. This will get you to the same Computer Management window you saw earlier. In the left pane click to expand Storage and click to highlight Disk Management. The right pane will contain an upper and lower section. Focus on the lower section. You should see for example things like Disk 0, Disk 1 or whatever you have in there. You may only have a single Disk 0. The disk are physical hard disk (hard drives). Beside each disk listed you will see the Volume information as it should appear in the upper section. Now for example if you see a single drive as in Disk 0 with letters beside it like C: and F: that means you have a single hard drive (Disk 0) with partitions of C: and F: for example.

Since you mentioned that your C: drive (partition) was labeled System that tells us that the operating system (Windows XP) should be installed to that drive. This is strange as the BOOT.INI file for Windows XP is generally installed on the same drive as Windows XP, unlike Vista or Windows 7 which install their boot files differently. Thus I don't understand why you are seeing the System and Boot labels on two different partitions? Not saying it can't be but it is unusual for a system like I think you have. Since the C: drive is the system drive you should have no problem accessing files and folders on the C: drive. You can change drive letter assignments, however, you cannot change the system drive letter assignment. Generally you would just right click on a partition and choose Change drive letter and paths but not for the OS drive. It won't let you.

You mentioned this was a replacement motherboard? Did you reinstall the motherboard? When the motherboard was replaced, was the system fully reformatted and Windows XP reinstalled?

Something else we can check to be sure of where the actual BOOT.INI file is. Right click My Computer and choose Properties. In the small System Properties window click the Advanced tab. Under Startup and Recovery click the Settings button. This should open the startup and recovery dialog box. Click the edit button and copy and paste what you see in here. This will be your BOOT.INI file and the location.

Ron
sobeit
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Joined: Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:19 am
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Re: Making the C: my master drive

Post by sobeit »

Hello reloadron,
I racked my brain and I finally figured it all out with a lot of researching. Somehow the H:Factory drive was grabbing the installs and I checked the mother board for the jumpers to the H: drive and switched the jumper around til I seen C: drive was the main drive. Took a little bit but I did it. Now this PC is running like new or better. Thanks for your suggestions and sorry for losing you on a few things but again thanks for your help.
Happy New Year to you and the family.
Tony
reloadron
Posts: 519
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2008 8:57 am
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
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Re: Making the C: my master drive

Post by reloadron »

Glad it is working for you! Best wishes also for a Happy New Year.

Ron
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