"H" drive?

F

fmonte

Member
I did a fresh install for the first time today. I booted up the computer and a dos screen came up that said put os disk in and hit enter. I went through the install without a hitch, but now I notice my main drive is the h drive and the c,d,e,f,g drives are the card reader slots on the front of my machine. I don't mind if I have to do the install all over again, but my question is: this time when I turn on the machine and I already have the disk in there(I left it in when I shut down) will I get that dos screen or will it continue to boot into windows now that it is installed? Also, what do I have to do this time to make the c drive my main drive? Thank you.

Frank
 
Unplug the card reader and install Windows. After the install, plug in the card reader and install the necessary drivers for the card reader. ;)
 
Thanks, but how do you unplug the card reader. Also when I start the computer now it boots right to the windows desktop. How do I get the prompt that I got before that asked me to put in a disk and hit enter?
 
fmonte said:
Thanks, but how do you unplug the card reader.
Click to expand...

Open the case and unplug the card reader cable from the motherboard. You can also try to disable the drives in teh BIOS.

fmonte said:
Also when I start the computer now it boots right to the windows desktop. How do I get the prompt that I got before that asked me to put in a disk and hit enter?
Click to expand...

You need to set the CD/DVD drive to boot first in the boot priority. You must enter the BIOS to modify the boot prioity. Are you familiar with how to enter/use the BIOS? Can you give me the model number of the PC you are using? Is it a custom build?
 
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Thank you. The model is an Acer Aspire T180 AST180-U440A. I am not sure how to get to the bios. Any advise is greatly appreciated.
 
Are you using the factory recovery disk, or a Windows installation CD?

To enter the BIOS, startup your computer, at the splash screen (Acer or other logo should appear) press the "delete" key. That's the BIOS. You want your boot priority menu to look something like this:

DSC02781.jpg
 
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I,m using a windows installation disk. I tried what you told me and I did get that black screen that said I was booting from the cd drive but it still went right through to the desktop.
 
Have you considered a factory recovery as opposed to a clean Windows installation? Is there a particular reason you are using the Windows disk?
 
Yes, the original os is vista on the machine and although I can get recovery disks I want to use xp to retain the use of my printer, scanner and scanner software. The machine came from an ebay company with no operating system installed, that is why I did not have a problem the first time. I guess my main question is: how do I get back to that position where the machine has no operating system installed? I think if I could do that, I could unhook those readers and do it right this time.
 
If you plan to use XP, you need to make sure you can get hardware drivers from Acer for that operating system. Your computer is designed for Windows Vista.

Anyway, if you're sure you have the boot priority set correctly, I'm not sure why you cannot boot the Windows installation disk.
 
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Thank you for trying. One last question. The company that sold me the computer must have been able to uninstall the the os before they sold it to me. I can't get ahold of them to ask but shouldn't I be able to do the same thing? Do you have any idea how they did it?

In regard to the driver issue that you mentioned, I checked the device manager and here are the items that had a yellow ?.

Ethernet Controller
PCI Device
PCI Modem
SM Bus Controller
Video
Controller(VGA Compatible)

I don't know what all these items are. Do you think I am going to have trouble?
 
Click here for your computer's support page at the Acer website. The devices you list above require Windows XP drivers. I would recommend contacting Acer and see if they can provide you w/ the drivers for the devices above. Ask them if it's possible to install XP on that machine.

If you can't run XP, you should order a factory recovery disk from Acer. Are you still having problems booting to the CD?
 
fmonte said:
That was it, the any key. I wasn't hitting it fast enough. sorry, I had no idea.
Click to expand...

ha ha. That "press any key" instruction will get you every time. :P

Now that that's out of the way, make sure you can get XP drivers for the devices above. Good luck. :)
 
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