Why is the boot drive letter not C: after installing Windows XP on a blank drive? or Why do I get a file extraction error installing Dell Drivers after OSRI?

Both problems stem from the same issue, the Windows setup process did not assign drive letter C: to the hard drive during the Windows XP/2000/NT installation process. So let’s talk about WHY this happened first.

During the installation of Windows XP (2000 and NT use the same process) after a BLANK hard disk drive has been installed in the system, the setup process does not AUTOMATICALLY assigned drive letter C: to the HDD.  This can happen because:

1.       There is a Media Card Reader in the system

2.       There is a Zip Drive in the system

3.       There is a USB Flash Drive connected to the system

4.       There is a USB Printer connected to the system that has a media card reader

5.       There is an External Hard Drive connected to the system

If, any of these devices are in the system, setup will assign drive letter C: to one of these devices and then the hard disk drive (HDD) ends up with drive letter H or such.  The boot drive letter in and of itself is not a big deal.  Anyone with a multi-boot system like mine at home is familiar with non-C: boot drives and they per se cause no problems.  This is where the 2^nd part of the title comes in, the Dell drive installation.  For reasons unknown, Dell hard codes the extraction string of our driver installs to C:\Dell\Drivers\.....  where the industry standard terminology uses a wild card %windir% ….. 

On systems where the boot drive (Windows Drive) letter is not C:, you have to change the path the driver install uses to the new drive letter.  If the HDD is assigned H: as the drive letter, then the extract string needs the C at the beginning of the string (C:\Dell\Drivers\Rxxxxxx) changed to the assigned drive letter H (H:\dell\drivers\Rxxxxxx)  and the drivers will install normally and the system will run just fine. 

Just about any other application or 3^rd party driver (Printer driver for example) will look using the %windir% wild card to find the Windows installation and continue without fault.  Applications will automatically look to the boot drive letter for saving files etc. and the system will function normally, except for an occasional drive letter path change.

How to prevent this issue?  Easy

1.       Boot to the Windows Setup as normal

2.       Create an NTFS partition and format it

3.       POWER the system off

4.       Reboot the system into the Windows Setup a 2^nd time, the HDD will be assigned C: and continue with the Windows installation.

NOTES: 

1.       This issue only occurs on HDDs that contain no valid partition.

2.       Imaged HDDs do not have this issue

3.       Many of these can be prevented by ensuring all peripherals are disconnected BEFORE installing Windows (USB Drives, Flash Drives, Printers) you can also turn off USB FLexbay devices in BIOS (Remember to re-enable later if you do disable it)

4.       This issue only occurs in Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT (Windows 7 & Windows Vista use a different setup process and Windows 9x MUST install to C: )