XPS 400 Upgrade

[Ricky Moore]

Over the weekend I been upgrading my XPS 400 (D820) to run Windows 7 Pro.
As of now it's a duel boot system until I get everything moved over to the Windows 7.
Windows 7 is on a 250GB HDD while Windows XP Pro is on a 160GB.

Not all programs on the XP will run on Windows 7 until I buy the upgrades for them.

I wish I had thought about it before and put Windows 7 Ultimate on the D820 and the Windows 7 Pro on the Laptop!

Windows has name the 250GB HDD as Drive F: and the XP Drive as Drive C:. At some point I will have to change that so that Windows 7 is C: and XP is F:. Trying to think of the best way to do that. I am wondering if I unplug the C: drive will Windows 7 adjust the F: drive to C: and then make the other one a F: when I plug it back in?????

[Fire$torm]

If when you have booted into Windows 7 the system drive is tagged as drive F: then you are stuck with it. All versions of Windows use a horrendous naming scheme for allocating drive letters.

I know this is a hassle but you need to reinstall Win7 with only the drive you wish to use for it. I have 4 HDDs in my desktop and I have to unplug the other three each time I need to reinstall Windows. This is true for all versions of Windows since Win2K.

After installing Windows then you reattach the other drive(s).

[Ricky Moore]

If when you have booted into Windows 7 the system drive is tagged as drive F: then you are stuck with it. All versions of Windows use a horrendous naming scheme for allocating drive letters.

I know this is a hassle but you need to reinstall Win7 with only the drive you wish to use for it. I have 4 HDDs in my desktop and I have to unplug the other three each time I need to reinstall Windows. This is true for all versions of Windows since Win2K.

After installing Windows then you reattach the other drive(s).

If that is the case when I install BOINC on the F: Drive and BOINC data files stays on C: then BOINC is going to have a lot of room! about 150GB worth! If that works then I won't have to re-attach all my projects again because the folders are still on the C: Drive.

Unless BOINC chances the data/program drive at time it is installed!

Besides as long as Win 7 knows where everything is I am not going to worry about it! Takes to long with my dial-up speed to fo all those updates again!


UPDATE: I learned something else about this desktop... the BIOS does NOT have a setting to tell it which HDD to boot from. If you have 2 HDD's that has a boot sector then the system freezes up on boot up because it don't know what drive to boot to. You have disable/unplug one. On my old Desktop you could tell the BIOS to boot from Drive 0 or 1 or whatever and even if both were bootable it would only boot from the drive you set. That is how I was able to have 3 different OS's (DOS, 98se & XP Home) on that desktop and didn't have to worry about it.

For this Desktop you have to use the "DUEL BOOT" setup and make it so it defaults to your "main" OS so if you are not there during a reboot it will Boot in the right OS.

[Gopher_FreeDC]

Hmm in on my rig, I can set which drive is the primary boot drive, I just have to make sure it boots from the right one if I add a new drive as it has a tendency to swap it about.

And In windows it is possible to rearrange drive letters from control panel > admin tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management
you can rearrange ANY drive letter to any other non-used drive letter and I'm sure there are tools that can re-arrange any registry entries from old to new - I know Partition Magic used to have a tool for it - THAT would be the issue is all.

[Fire$torm]

If that is the case when I install BOINC on the F: Drive and BOINC data files stays on C: then BOINC is going to have a lot of room! about 150GB worth! If that works then I won't have to re-attach all my projects again because the folders are still on the C: Drive.

Unless BOINC chances the data/program drive at time it is installed!

Besides as long as Win 7 knows where everything is I am not going to worry about it! Takes to long with my dial-up speed to fo all those updates again!


UPDATE: I learned something else about this desktop... the BIOS does NOT have a setting to tell it which HDD to boot from. If you have 2 HDD's that has a boot sector then the system freezes up on boot up because it don't know what drive to boot to. You have disable/unplug one. On my old Desktop you could tell the BIOS to boot from Drive 0 or 1 or whatever and even if both were bootable it would only boot from the drive you set. That is how I was able to have 3 different OS's (DOS, 98se & XP Home) on that desktop and didn't have to worry about it.

For this Desktop you have to use the "DUEL BOOT" setup and make it so it defaults to your "main" OS so if you are not there during a reboot it will Boot in the right OS.

Yeppers. That is why it is better to install both OS's on the same drive and then use the second HDD just for data storage like BOINC's DATA folder.

Also you can backup the BOINC app folder along with its data folder ( my SOP is to put the data folder in the main BOINC folder). After getting the new OS up and running, use the BOINC installer to set everything up where you had it before and then delete the contents of your BOINC and DATA folders and restore your backups. BOINC will then pickup where you left off without having to reattach anything. This works for Windows and Linux. I just did it this weekend.




Hmm in on my rig, I can set which drive is the primary boot drive, I just have to make sure it boots from the right one if I add a new drive as it has a tendency to swap it about.

And In windows it is possible to rearrange drive letters from control panel > admin tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management
you can rearrange ANY drive letter to any other non-used drive letter and I'm sure there are tools that can re-arrange any registry entries from old to new - I know Partition Magic used to have a tool for it - THAT would be the issue is all.

But he was talking about Dual booting and what Windows sees in that configuration.

I have tried PMagic many times but never got to work on a boot partition. Something always got corrupted.

One could try grub to set the MBR but I have not gone that route in years.

Edit: Pmagic does not work on Windows 7 partitions.

[Gopher_FreeDC]

What I was getting at is there should be an option in the bios to determine the BOOT order of everything i.e CD rom / HDD / other and if it gives that bare options, there should also be an option for setting the HDD boot order..
I know PQ PM doesn't work with 7 I had to go find another tool to partition / fix my partitions.
As for dual boot, yeah he'd need to use grub to fix the boot once he took away the XP setup unless he's managed to get the win 7 to dual boot with XP with the MBR set up that way on the Win 7 HDD, not impossible a simple MBRFIX / Bootfix from the CD should remove any traces and there are tools to fix the mbr to remove other OS's from lists.

[Ricky Moore]

On this Desktop you can set the Drive you wish to boot from only to a point:

Floppy Drive
CD ROM/DVD
HDD
USB Drive

When it comes to HDD it tries to boot from a Drive that has a Boot file. If more then one has a Boot file it locks up!

Whichever Drive you move to the top of the list is the Drive it checks 1st.