Hi,
I've just made a fresh install of Windows XP on my desktop machine... or so I thought. First I discovered the install had formatted the wrong drive due to the XP installation messing up my harddrive layout, then after installing, the os won't start. All I get is an error message after boot.

I've got 3 Maxtor 300GB disks like this:
C: (windows partition, recognized by install as E
D: (recognized by install as C
E: (recognized by install as D

The OS was originally installed on C: (the one regognized as E: at the XP install), but now it won't let me install windows on that drive. It previously let me install on that drive, although it put the windows-boot on D: (recognized as C.

I tried setting the harddrives I don't want to install to to "None" in the BIOS, forcing the comp to let it think they're not there. But Alas, it didn't work. The install somehow finds all disks anyhow.
I also tried messing around with the boot-sequence of the drives. No change there either.

And I don't want to physically remove any drive since I got a three years warranty on the thing.

I'm not new to installing OS's and haven't had any trouble earlier. Not with win95, 98, XP or the couple of Linux distros I've tried.
The thing is that I've never installed an OS on a comp with multiple harddrives before now.

Also, I've partitioned the windows disk to give it only a hundred gigs to windows and apps.


Please help.

Hi tltcuwau!
Welcome to PC Helpforum!

I personally think that the easiest way is to physically disconnect 2 harddrivers, and then install XP. It's impossible to make a mistake then. Also, you might want to put the disk which has XP on it on the IDE Primary Master.
Get back if you got problems with this, or you don't know exactly what to do.

Blue

Hey there tltcuwau and welcome to PCHF,

• Firstly is this a brand new PC or just brand new hard drives?
• Secondly does your machine have a warranty sticker on the case where you would normally remove the cover or screw?

If there is no sticker then I recommend doing as bluefish suggested, I will try explain a few extra things for you.

• The easiest way would be to disconnect your two extra drives and install windows on the drive that you have left in the machine. Then once windows is installed you can connect your two other drives.

Alternatively you can try the following:

I assume you are using SATA drives, one thing you may have noticed is they don't have jumpers to let you change whether they are master/slave, therefore you are going to have to be careful if you wanna try connect all three and then setup windows.
Because you have three identical drives you will also need to determine what names the BIOS gives them.

• Firstly make sure the drive you want to use as master (C) is connected to the FIRST Sata connector e.g Sata 1
• I would then turn the machine on and go into your BIOS, some of BIOS's these days allow you to configure in what order your drives run. So once in the bios (at the moment you only have the master drive connected) check to see what name the BIOS gives to your drive and write it down. Set it as the master drive or first boot.
• Save and exit, then shutdown your machine and connect your second drive, perform the same steps as above and write down the name of the second drive, then give it the space underneath the master.
• Do the same for the third.

The reason I got you to write down the names is incase the BIOS swaps the names around, at least now you know which order you want them in so you can manually swap them around in the BIOS if need be.

Once you are happy with the configuration you can boot your PC and install windows, hopefully this solves your installation problems.


Hopefully the above is easy to understand, sometimes I ramble on, let us know if you need anything explained.