need help(direction) with hard drive replacement

R

rick92647

New Member
New member here. I just replaced a hard drive in a compaq desktop, loaded xp home, and now dont have sound, or recognition of the wireless (on board) card that was operating prior to drive replacement. Downloaded original drivers for wireless card and sound and mb.. etc, and when i go to install them, error message says that "c" drive has no memory, ("c" drive now shows as a removable drive, and the OS is on "H" drive). only have one hard drive.
1.Did I make a mistake on original installation of OS (drive/partition choice) when installing windows?
2. Do I reinstall/format the OS and look for the "C" drive?
3. How can I reassign where drivers are installed? (tried to re-name primary drive from H to C, and windows wouldnt let me.
4. Is this something I can do in DOS?
Thanks so much for any help!
Rick:confused:
 
rick92647 said:
New member here. I just replaced a hard drive in a compaq desktop, loaded xp home, and now dont have sound, or recognition of the wireless (on board) card that was operating prior to drive replacement. Downloaded original drivers for wireless card and sound and mb.. etc, and when i go to install them, error message says that "c" drive has no memory, ("c" drive now shows as a removable drive, and the OS is on "H" drive). only have one hard drive.
1.Did I make a mistake on original installation of OS (drive/partition choice) when installing windows?
2. Do I reinstall/format the OS and look for the "C" drive?
3. How can I reassign where drivers are installed? (tried to re-name primary drive from H to C, and windows wouldnt let me.
4. Is this something I can do in DOS?
Thanks so much for any help!
Rick:confused:
Click to expand...

Did you just put the new drive in with the existing one?

It is possible that what is now called the C: drive is your CD drive. You can try re-assigning the C: drive a new letter first.

1. Probably not. See first question though ^

2. What showed up in Windows Setup when you got to the point of choosing a drive?

3. Try re-assigning C: to another letter first.

4. It depends on what you are trying to do.
 
Zatharus-
thanks for your response- see below


Did you just put the new drive in with the existing one?
no, i removed the old drive (it crashed) and put the new one in the same spot


It is possible that what is now called the C: drive is your CD drive. You can try re-assigning the C: drive a new letter first.
No, the cd rom drive is another letter, and i did try to do what you suggested in device manager, and windows wouldnt allow that change, i also disabled all other drives to see if i can reassign the H (where the OS is) and no go

1. Probably not. See first question though ^

2. What showed up in Windows Setup when you got to the point of choosing a drive? I dont remember any choices other than the quick format option (which i chose)

3. Try re-assigning C: to another letter first. Tried that see above

4. It depends on what you are trying to do. All i want to do is to get the drivers installed so i have sound and wireless card working. The drivers i downloaded from compaq, but like said before when it goes to install them, it says there isnt adequate memory in c drive (which shows as a removeable drive)

Do I need to reinstall windows, and pay attention to options as far as drive name etc??? Any other options, like maybe using a formatting tool, like swissknife to just reformat and see if that allows a choice of drives?
 
Ah! Pardon me... I didn't catch "removable drive" earlier. I take it your computer has a card reader in it? That is what it probably the C: device is. You should also be able to re-assign this. That is quite strange that it trumped the System drive for C:, but it does happen.
 
Negative on the card reader, this is just a regular presario i was given and am fixing it for a friend who cant afford a new unit. what was your take on me just either reloading windows, or using a format utility and start over? (I dont have too much time invested as of yet, like registration and other app to install)
 
or.... I do have the old drive still, and an enclosure to put it in......I can recover old data from the folders. should I copy all drivers and try and paste into the new H drive? what folders do i retrieve? just match folder names from old to new?
 
Woah...Yeah, start over. I'm not sure where the phantom C: device is coming from.

When you re-run Windows Setup, delete all partitions on the drive and re-create it. Then, just to be safe, do a low-level format (i.e. not quick format).
 
I'm pretty sure you won't be able to reassign the C: drive.

I would start over personally.

When you go to install again, it will ask you where you want to put the
installation. It comes before the format options.

The only time I've ever seen Windows assign a drive letter for itself other
than C:, is when the drive already has a partition on it, and there are
Windows folders and files there.
 
i am reinstalling and noticed there is advanced install options where i can choose which drive i want the data to go.... here we go!
 
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