There are several things. First, if you have an existing OS on the system, Windows wil see that and won't want to overwrite the existing "C: drive" unless you do a repair install. One way to overcome that is to format from the DOS prompt (assuming you have a DOS boot disk available on floppy). You could also unplug the other drives (memory sticks and USB drives) during the install BUT, if there is an existing C drive, that may not help unless you tell the install to overwrite the existing OS.
I only have the factory-installed drive and have used fdisk from a bootable DOS floppy to remove all partitions and ran fdisk /mbr to clear the master boot record. Thus, I am starting from scratch.
The problem is, if I insert my Win XP boot CD, then get to the screen to partition, it will first list all the memory slot devices as drives, so when I select the hard drive itself (which happens to be at the bottom of the list), and it shows as unformatted, and I opt to create a partition (say half the drive, leaving the other half unformatted), the first available drive letter is H.
That would fall in line with 4 "smart memory" slots plus a USB port (each slot being a drive letter, then the USB port also being a drive letter), leading us to H.
There are NO devices plugged into any of those smart memory slots, and there doesn't seem a way to disable them, either.
I found the same is true when trying to install Windows fresh on a machine that has an IDE/ATAPI Zip drive installed. The system will see that drive as drive C, making the hard drive's initial partition E or F, depending on how many IDE CD drives are also installed. If the ZIP drive is physically removed, then Windows will partition it as drive C.
But back to this story - how to disable (a jumper or hidden BIOS screen?) the smart memory slots...
Thanks.
Scott
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