rec.autos.simulators

by **Thos** » Thu, 02 Jan 2003 22:41:47

>Well I think I flummoxed it pretty good. I decided to go ahead and do it
>last night, before I saw this reply. I put the new drive in as primary and
>the old drive as secondary, booted from the XP CD, and everything seemed to
>work. But for some reason XP decided to make the new drive E: and the old
>drive C:, and it also picked up the PATH settings from the previous Windows
>install, in spite of the fact that I did not boot from that drive or even
>ask XP to look at it. Now with this setup I could not figure out how to get
>FAST to do what I wanted since it does not seem to want to transfer between
>two drives on one computer, but that was not a major problem since I copied
>my IE favorites over and used the OE import wizards to bring my address book
>and e-mail folders over. The only difficult part was that I could not get
>OE to import the old mail and news account data so I had to recreate that
>manually. Everything is more or less working now, but I am a bit concerned
>about the drive letters. If I ever decide to take the old drive out and put
>it in a different machine (which was part of the long term plan) I think I
>am going to hose the XP installation. Any advice?

Windows XP will 'flummox' the drive designation every time if it sees
another hard drive. I normally INSTALL with only one HD connected at
installation, but I think I've gotten around it. If you get into the
installation up to picking the drive you want to install to, create the
drive, it'll say something like New (RAW). At this point, F3 out
completely. Reinsert your CD and go thru again up to picking the
partition, and I think the choice will be C:\ for the originally created
partition.

I use Partition Boot Manager to multi-boot two identical installs of the
same XP Pro, one for *** that can't even SEE the other, and a 'work'
partition I don't install games, test video card drivers, stuff like
that. From the work partition I set it so I can SEE the game partition
so I can copy files to it, etc., so if I'm in the work partition, read
some NG tip, I can download to the game partition and later, boot to it
and do whatever. Check out PBM at http://www.racesimcentral.net/

You might read the part of the documentation regarding installing
Windows XP where you'll see an explanations of what I tried to say
above. As I recall it's explained much better there than my attempt. I
do it automatically now because having XP installed on something other
that C:\ doesn't work for this old DOS guy. I want my partitions ordered
the old fashioned way, dammit!!

by **Chris H** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 01:16:58

I'd back out of what you've got already, so you don't get in too deep. Then
begin again so you don't have too much to build back up. The Windows XP CD
can run FAST on the "old" C: drive, save your settings to your G: or
whatever, then pull that hard drive. Putting in the new hard drive, the
system won't see by one, and you'll be able to install to the C: drive
there, etc., etc. When you return to FAST, your XP install will be the
"new" system, and the G: drive will be the location of the "old." What's
really nifty with FAST is you can bring over the data files for your games
(I've had the directory structure reproduced for GPL, including my saved
files, etc.) and all you need do is install the game on the new hard drive.
Everything else is picked up.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP
Associate Expert
Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

> Well I think I flummoxed it pretty good. I decided to go ahead and do it
> last night, before I saw this reply. I put the new drive in as primary
> and
> the old drive as secondary, booted from the XP CD, and everything seemed
> to
> work. But for some reason XP decided to make the new drive E: and the old
> drive C:, and it also picked up the PATH settings from the previous
> Windows
> install, in spite of the fact that I did not boot from that drive or even
> ask XP to look at it. Now with this setup I could not figure out how to
> get
> FAST to do what I wanted since it does not seem to want to transfer
> between
> two drives on one computer, but that was not a major problem since I
> copied
> my IE favorites over and used the OE import wizards to bring my address
> book
> and e-mail folders over. The only difficult part was that I could not get
> OE to import the old mail and news account data so I had to recreate that
> manually. Everything is more or less working now, but I am a bit
> concerned
> about the drive letters. If I ever decide to take the old drive out and
> put
> it in a different machine (which was part of the long term plan) I think I
> am going to hose the XP installation. Any advice?

> > Yes, you sure can. I'd create a logical partition for your data on the
> > "old" drive you're going to be using as the secondary, give it a drive
> > letter like G or something which won't goof up the normal C: of your new
> > first hard drive Primary partition sequence, plus CD-ROM (etc.) drives.
> > Then run your Windows XP CD on the existing hard drive, saving the FAST
> info
> > to the G:\Storage area. Once you install the new hard drive, you can
> > add
> > the second drive back to the system and access/import the FAST
> information.
> > There's a pretty good article (with a couple additional links) here:

> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/columns/crawford/novemb...
> p
> > --
> > Chris H.
> > Microsoft Windows MVP
> > Associate Expert
> > Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

by **Haqsa** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 02:18:06

Unfortunately I already spent a full day getting everything working with
this set up and am not anxious to do it again. Is it possible, after I
eventually transfer the old (currently C:) drive to another computer to just
convince the remaining drive that it is still E:?

by **Aide** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 02:30:01

what you need for certain is to lose all you have....the whole lot..

that shows you every time that nothing is priceless,all can be replaced and
you end up never remembering what you had on the first time that was
sooooooo special.

each time i format,i save nothing.....and i miss nothing.....100's of sites
in my faves list...they get replaced by another list with 100's in it.

old emails i saved...what for..???..never miss 1 of them...

The fact remains here that you have not made the right decision....you
should have and still can do VERY easily install a fresh copy of your o/s
onto that new drive.

You will regret it...you can bet any money you like on that.

The sooner you realise that anything and everything on that pc is
dispensible the better....instead of the thought that you you just HAVE to
save stuff at all cost.

Anything that was worth saving from any of my pc installs was immediatly
backed up onto cd at source,like digi pics of family,events,pets who then
died etc etc.

All games,apps,files,websites were easily replaced.

Not having a go...just saying that until my first mega majot crach when i
lost alot i thought as you seem to be thinking.,but i learned from it

:)

AD

by **Haqsa** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 03:29:26

I can relate to what you are saying but at this point the time element of
having to redo everything is the problem. So I could also turn the argument
around and say if nothing is that priceless then I can live with things the
way they are now and just reformat in 6 months or whenever I get around to
putting the old drive into a different computer. I might have the time to
do it then, I don't right now. The argument works both ways, doesn't it?
:o)

by **Aide** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 10:15:39

Sure does mate...was only attempting to reassure ;)

AD

by **Chris H** » Fri, 03 Jan 2003 16:25:28

You may want to look at "assign, change" (without quotes) in Help and
Support for information on assigning or changing a drive letter. At the
present time, you won't be able to change it because the install already has
recognized a C: drive.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP
Associate Expert
Expert Zone - www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone

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