XP using wrong hard drive

[EricB]

when you are done formating the drive to ntfs, eject the xp cd immediately before it starts to copy files (when it says check drive). the xp install will stop. hit f3 to restart your comp.

your primary partition will now show up first.

also. unplug your usb drive, while installing xp. you are creating a headache by having it in

Sorry, I left out the part where you got through the install again. the xp disc looks for primary formatted partitions first. if you don't have a formatted partition, it goes to the next one. if you format at this stage, that drive won't be a C drive. if you restart the computer and go through the install again it will be c drive

 

[peterhuang913]

Yea. The CD will load its files onto the first usable hard drive it sees. So if it loads onto your external, it'll make that the primary hard drive with the internal as the secondary boot drive. Which is not what we want here.

 

[EricB]

Yea. The CD will load its files onto the first usable hard drive it sees. So if it loads onto your external, it'll make that the primary hard drive with the internal as the secondary boot drive. Which is not what we want here.

so true and it's a really simple matter to turn it off

 

[Pericles]

ok, so I put the xp disc back in, follow all the steps to reformat, and it comes up to a bit where I choose which partition I can install windows on, the problem is, my onboard hard drive does not show up it only shows the recovery partition.

Can you explain to me when exactly to eject the cd...

sorry about this.

 

[EricB]

ok, so I put the xp disc back in, follow all the steps to reformat, and it comes up to a bit where I choose which partition I can install windows on, the problem is, my onboard hard drive does not show up it only shows the recovery partition.

Can you explain to me when exactly to eject the cd...

sorry about this.

Didn't you delete it already? if you turn off the external hdd, then you should only see one. install xp on it