windows 2000 installation questions

[miscsyl]

I have 3 physical drives (C:, D:, and X and performed a clean installation of windows 2000 on C: drive.

Questions:
1) I accidentally installed windows 2000 on D: drive (I have C:, D:, and X: drives - physical drives). How can I remove windows 2000 on D: drive. Everytime I restart my computer, I have to select between 2 windows 2000 OS options - where first one being windows 2000 on C: drive. I did format D: from windows 2000 installed on C: drive; but I still have windows 2000 option showing up at the start up. I do want to physically remove windows 2000 from D: drive.

2) How can I make X: to appear on windows 2000?
After a clean installation of windows 2000, I can't seem to detect X: drive - I was able to see this before. Do I have to install a driver? I am using Western Digital 80 GB (8 MB cache) hard drive as X: drive. This X: drive did not show up during Windows 2000 installtion (where I have to select the partition of the hard drive).

Thank you.

 

[Teq]

Hi Miscsyl,
I see you've got some interesting wierdness happening <G>.

For the dual boot problem, boot into your C: drive, right click on My Computer and pick Properties. In the dialogue that pops up select Advanced then Startup and Recovery... near the top of the panel you will see a check box for "display list of operating systems" Uncheck the box. And make sure the pull down above it is selected to boot to your C: copy of win2k. This should stop the OS selector from popping up, freeing you to delete the copy of win2k from the D: Drive.

Reboot and make sure it's loading correctly before going to the next step...

For drive X, right click My Computer but this time pick Manage instead of properties. This will pop up the Management console, select Storage then Disk Management. On the bottom right panel you will see a list of physical drives connected to your computer. From there you can right click on any drive and change it's letters and properties.

Hope this helps.

 

[miscsyl]

Teq:

Thank you for the info. I was able to solve the dual boot problem.

About X: drive problem:
I have 3 physical hard drives.(C:, D:, and X. I still can't detect X:. Any advise? Can I switch between X: and D: and see whether my computer will detect X: drive as D:? Is this possible? I just want to make sure there is nothing wrong with the connection - I was able to detect X: before the clean installtion.

I believe X: drive is shown in BIOS settings (not 100 % sure), but not in windows 2000.

Thank you.

 

[Teq]

Is drive X: a hard disk?

Is your X: drive showing up as E: by any chance?

Windows tends to assign drive letters sequentially. That's why I suggested you look in your drive managment console.

I have to admit I've never seen this before, maybe someone else can shed more light...

 

[terster]

The only way to do this the way you want it is to remove the 2 physical drives and then install Windows 2000 on the one drive. After it's been installed, reconnect the other 2 hard drives. Go into your Computer management (right click on "My Computer" and select "manage". Then rename the other 2 drives if necessary). That will be the only way that i know of to truly get Windows 2000 on your "C" Drive.

Otherwise, what you can do is start with your D drive as the primary. Using the "computer management" console (as described above) rename the other drives to be "E", "F', and "G".

Then you need to go into the control panel, system, Advanced, Startup and Recovery tab, and uncheck the box that says, "Display list of operating systems for 30 seconds".

Unchecking that box will remove the 2 start-up selections when you first boot your PC.

Hope this helps.

Terster

 

[miscsyl]

terster:

Thank you for your info.
Just few questions before I try your recommendation:

1) Can I just disconnect and reconnect hard drives? (D: and X Will this enable windows 2000 to detect D: and X:?

2) D: drive was detected during and after windows 2000 installation. Just curious, why D: drive was detected; but not X: drive. I am just curious, why I need to disconnect both D: and X: drives when installing windows 2000 to C: drive.

Thank you.

 

[terster]

HI,

Just for clarification... Another user made the comment that Windows will sequentially name the hard drives. This is true. For this reason, it's important to disconnect the other drives before reinstalling windows.

Again, you want the primary drive to be labeled drive "C", right? If so, this is what you need to do.

From personal experience, what i found is... Disconnect all the hard drives but the one main drive which you want to be your "drive C".

Delete the partition and then recreate it. Reformat this drive and now Windows will assign this drive the "Drive C" designation.

Reinstall Windows.

Once done, reconnect the other hard drives.

You can now reformat and/or rename your other drives though the use of the "Disk Manager" utility.

I hope this helps.

Terster

 

[miscsyl]

terster:

Thank you for the info.

About naming the drive to C:
I don't need to name the drive to C:. Anything is fine. As long as I keep track of which one is master and which one is slave.

How does the procedure change if I don't need to install windows 2000 on C: drive? Is it easier? Just curious.

Thank you.

 

[GhostKat]

the only question that I haven't seen come up is how is the X drive connected to the computer? is it a slave or master and on what IDE channel is it on? The normal assumption would be that you have 4 total IDE drives 1 one them being the CD-ROM and the other 3 are the drives you are talking about and that all 4 drives could be hooked up the primary and secondary IDE channels. If this is the case then I would make sure you have 1 master and 1 slave on each channel. if it's not then make sure the IDE channel you have the X Drive connected to is working properly.

GK

Don't mind me I'm just posting so it doesn't say I'm a newb.