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[Aqizzar]

I was going to make a joke title to fit the "Life Advice" trends, but whatever.  Apparently this board is also for technical advice.

I'm trying to reformat my harddrive, by reinstalling Windows XP.  Before going any further, do not try to convert me to your favorite indie operating system.  I use XP, I want to reinstall XP, and I'm not going to be party to some OS war, so if you don't have help to offer with XP, then GTFO.

Anyway, so I'm trying to reinstall XP.  I'm doing this on a heavily modified Compaq Presario.  It includes a tiny harddrive, about 4gigs, with a system restoration package thing.  Now, I don't think it's capable of reformatting.  Moot point anyway, because it won't start whatever it does.  I think the last time I reformatted must have wiped out it's autorun features, so it's just deadweight in a little drive.

Where this becomes a problem, is that the XP installation keeps trying to install on that tiny extra harddrive (H:) instead of the C: drive where I want it.  I can't figure out where this extra drive is (if it's not just a hardcoded partition or something), so I can't unplug it.  The installation doesn't give me an option to chose which drive I'm installing on, it jumps straight to the "whether/how do you want to format this drive?" question for the H: drive.  And since the drive isn't big enough to install XP, it chokes, panics, and restarts when it gets there.  It also tries to continue that installation whenever I restart and try again.  And then I did something stupid, I tried to delete the Windows installation from H:.  Now when it restarts into setup mode, it just freezes on "setup is starting Windows", and I can't do anything else.

So... what the fuck do I do here?

[Vucar Fikodastesh]

It's probably skipping your main hard drive because it is SATA, and windows XP is old and doesn't have drivers for those on the disk. You'll have to manually load the drivers during the installation process.

There are two different methods of doing this depending on whether or not you have a floppy drive available.
Floppy, No Floppy.

EDIT: If the tiny hard drive is actually a partition of the main hard drive, then that isn't the problem. Are you formatting the hard drive with the windows setup CD?

[zchris13]

Good luck chin.  I hope that brain attached to you can pull you through this difficult time.  But yeah, the man has your problem well in hand.

[Aqizzar]

It's probably skipping your main hard drive because it is SATA, and windows XP is old and doesn't have drivers for those on the disk. You'll have to manually load the drivers during the installation process.

Doesn't appear to be the problem.  I still trying to find a list of what's in my computer, but the System Information just lists a bunch of IDE drivers, so I'll bet it's an IDE drive.  And yeah, I'm trying to format with a CD.

Well, on further inspection, I solved the problem I wanted to solve.  The Steam client appears to work the way it's supposed to now, so that's hopefully the end of my port-blocking connectivity problems, even though all my shit is still installed and still works.  Reinstalling Windows just seem to fix that.  Huh.  So... nevermind them.

UDPATE: Okay, this has introduced a new problem.  I can't use my USB jumpdrive.  Any port I plug it into, it starts a new hardware wizard in search of a driver, and won't let me just open the damn thing.  What's this about?

[Fossaman]

USB drives should have their drivers loaded on themselves, shouldn't they? Maybe you accidentally reformatted your jumpdrive?

[Aqizzar]

That would be pretty astounding.  But no, the jumpdrive works fine in another computer, I just can't plug it into this one.  I've always had a little problem with recognizing jumpdrives on this computer, because it treats them as hardware instead of just removable memory.  The USB port on the face doesn't work anymore, and the ones in the back seem to recognize drives in a different way for some reason.  But at any rate, it keeps looking drivers for some stupid reason.

Maybe I'll just look for USB memory drivers?  Damn computers.

[eerr]

Is this one of those USB drives with fancy software on it, or one of those USB drives with non-fancy software on it?

You should poke around windows to see if you can find universal plug and play.

(Not really sure on what you'd find, but its related to finding new hardware.)

[Lord Shonus]

Do your other USB devices work? It sound's like your USB drivers are corrupt.

If you do wind up reinstalling, download a program called Autopatcher first and burn it to CD. XP is an old OS, with a ton of security flaws unpatched. Autopatcher will install all the updates without connecting to the internet.

[Pathos]

What title could you use for the thread?

"I Tried To Make Her Work With Me, But I Just Couldn't Get Her Memory Clean Of The Things I'd Done In The Past"
"My Woman is Clogged Full of Porn, and I Don't Know What to Do"

[Pillow_Killer]

Seriously, indie? Windows is indie, unix been here forever.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

What title could you use for the thread?

"I Tried To Make Her Work With Me, But I Just Couldn't Get Her Memory Clean Of The Things I'd Done In The Past"
"My Woman is Clogged Full of Porn, and I Don't Know What to Do"

"She's old, but she does things no other has done for me"
"I want to replace her, but they're so expensive these days"