xp install as drive E on sata 2 hardrive

[sirrus]

please can someone help me
installed a new sata 2 drive on a asrock duel sata 2 motherboard.with no ide drives in. and windows insisted on install xp as boot drive E anyone know how to get it to install windows on drive c

 

[pike130]

I had similar issues a while back installing winxp sp1a on a 875pbz intel board using a sata wd 36gb raptor drive , using award bios. I had to make sure that the bios rev was updated , the bios was configured to recognized the drive , and specified that the boot drive was the recognized sata drive . Then , when the xp install asked for scsi drivers , I had to insert the intel driver cd disk and load drivers for the ICH5 chipset , which winxp wouldn't recognize , (the chipset for the sata interface ) . Once the drivers were installed at that point in the winxp os install process , the remaing process went with out a hitch . A word of caution , once you get the os installed and somewhat stable , load antivirus software and the run win update . I ended up getting the sobig virus when I updated from microsoft's website , and you can imagine the hair pulling , before being able to load av software to get the virus quarantined .
I also had other issue , once the sata drive installed winxp os , I was using a pata 150 gb hd for documents , music , photos , movies , etc. and the bios wanted to boot from that drive . It ended up being , that you had to respecify the boot order once the new pata 150 drive was installed . I am not sure if this info may help , but give it a try .

DWM

 

[sirrus]

Fix it.
Turn off ide detection in bios and removed cable from back of ide drive.
Reinstalled xp and let it format drive again,windows was on drive C and when i install the ide drive they had moved up 2 drive E
thank you all 4 your help I am happy again.

 

[wwein]

It's an old thread, but one of the first in the Google search after I recently had the problem, and therefore worth the reply.

I had this exact same problem - reinstalling Windows (XP) after changing a hard drive, but it delegates weird drive letters to each hard drive. I have some IDE and some SATA drives, so I would rearrange some drives, reinstall Windows, check the drive letter assignment, and repeat the process. Nothing helped. The drive I wanted to become the C drive was always labeled last, regardless of which SATA port I connected it to, or which hard drives I had disconnected. While it is true I could have disconnected all other drives and installed then, I always like to understand a bug rather than bypass it and learn nothing. Then the answer hit me, and I fixed my problem!

The windows installer seems to assign drive letters in the boot order of the drives within the BIOS. So I simply changed the boot order, then reinstalled Windows and all was right with the world. For those confused how to do this, follow these steps:
1. Restart your computer
2. As it boots, tap the key that brings you to the BIOS (usually DELETE, or F1 for some motherboards)
3. Each BIOS is different but look for options to change the hard drive boot order
4. Move the drive you want as C to the top, D second from top, etc
5. Save the BIOS settings (usually F10) and restart
6. Install Windows