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A friend of mine gave me an older P3 system running Windows ME. I installed another HD (as slave with jumpers set as such according to Western Digital). I reformatted the HD; CMOS recognizes it as D: drive and slave. C: drive is seen as Master. I have boot sequence set as 1. Hard Drive, 2. CD, 3. Removable Drive.

I then did a clean install of Windows XP. But instead of doing a clean install on C: drive, it installed it onto the D: drive. Mind you it works just fine on the D: drive. But I wanted to use that drive for storing my files. In any case, I thought I might have done something different. So I tried doing a clean install again on the C: drive.

I rebooted the system, then a drive option screen pops up, it gave me the 3 choices; to boot with Windows XP (D), Windows (C), or Windows setup disk (E), I chose Windows XP. Boots up fine. So I proceeded to install. Installation starts up fine, I go through the prelims, updating files, then I get an install destination screen (at least I think that's what it was). But the only option it gives me is the D: drive. No C:.

So now I have 2 drives with 2 different OS. And everytime I startup, I get the drive selection menu (Windows XP or Windows). If I don't select, it ends up launching XP. Also, when I boot from the C: drive (Windows ME, boots ok) and install software, it automatically installs onto the D: drive.

So, how do I do a clean upgrade on C:, and have it boot from there. Once I can accomplish this, I can reformat the slave drive. So that it's basically just storage drive.

Thanks in advance.

Hi ganj, welcme to the PCHF!

The problem with Windows XP...is it's a bit silly.

If you remove the removable media and try reinstalling windows, this will make it install on C and not anything else.

Thanks for your reply GaRHaR. If I do this and reinstall. Then I put the slave drive back in. Will it also fix the default install drive issue as well?

Cheers.

Hi ganj, yes it will.

You can also change an entry in the registry to this effect as well, but that's not recommended.

Sweet. That helped. Thanks.