Re: HELP! SYSPREP keeps changing my drive letters!!!

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: Gordon Fecyk (gordonf_at_pan-am.ca)
Date: 03/29/04 

Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 15:14:40 -0600

> Drive C: <No Volume Label> - Primary Partition for Windows XP set as
active
> Drive D: <Pagefile> - Primary Partition that holds my pagefile.
> Drive E: <Apps & Data> - Logical drive in an extended partition that holds
> all my apps software.

I understand wanting to move the pagefile to another volume to keep it
unfragmented. I did this. I don't quite understand why you'd want to store
all the applications and stuff on another volume though, especially since
you're not benefitting from the default security ACLs on the root of C, on
Program Files and on Documents and Settings.

But if you're doing this for other reasons, what happens if you use one
primary partition and have two logical drives on the extended partition?
You can switch this around with Ghost by restoring partitions within an
image to specific partitions, rather than restoring the complete image.

DOS used to be funny about the ordering of drive letters depending on what
partitions were where (primary vs logical) and most DOS-formatted hard
drives had but one primary partition only, with logical drives following,
but the ordering of the logical drives would at least be sequential (D, E, F
etc). For example:

Drive 1 Drive 2
==================
Pri (C) Pri (D)
Ext Ext
 Log1(E) Log1(H)
 Log2(F) Log2(I)
 Log3(G) Log3(J)

I don't know the behaviour caused by having multiple primary partitions,
though I do recall the limit was four in total (hence the "Extended
Partition" was invented). It could be that XP's defaulting to the DOS
ordering scheme when you first boot up a sysprepped installation, or it
could have its own unique ordering scheme. I don't recall seeing
documentation on it. And does XP Home support dynamic partitioning like XP
Pro and Win2K do?

My own image has one primary partition and one logical drive on the extended
partition (My pagefile). The machines I'm installing this on support large
drives in the BIOS (or I get a firmware update for it so it can).
Everything's going to want to install to whatever %programfiles% points to,
so I don't bother fighting it. It only takes me one reboot to move the
pagefile to the logical drive.

I would like to know if it's possible to programatically change the virtual
memory settings, but it's not critical. 

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