Ok i reloaded my friends laptop With XP Pro disk. There is also a recovery Partition. I decided to use the disk and do fresh install without all the Dell crap. Anyway After reloading i opened the My Computer icon. I noticed the Boot drive was D and the Recovery is drive C. Its like this Recovery(C) Local Disk (D).How could this happen? I was very careful not to delete the other partitions. Is there a way to fix this without reformatting? Thanks

It looks to me like you accidently installed XP on the Recovery partition. But maybe you just installed XP on the D: drive. Where are the windows folders?

The windows folder is on D XP is installed on D. I booted to XP CD. Where it asked what drive it was listed the same way D Recovery and C Local Disk. I figured after Windows got installed it would show up as C but it didn't. I was very careful not to delete the Dell partitions there are 3 partitions. 1 is 55 MB for utility then there is like a 99 GB then the recovery. In windows the 55 MB is hidden. Thanks

Well dang i tried to edit the above post and i get. Edit Posting Due to forum policy, messages posted more than five days ago may not be edited. Anyway the recovery files ARE on drive C. Can this be fixed by doing a simple FIX MBR? Please help on this issue it needs to be solved ASAP. Thanks

First off...which model Dell??? Here's a couple of ideas...the first one is probably NOT your problem... 1. I have run into a couple situations with Dell where you have to UNPLUG the front ports that you use for various cards, cameras, etc... When the XP boots up, it looks to see what devices are attached...It sees these ports and assigns a drive letter for them...You will see them in My Computer as drives, E, F G H etc etc...you have to UNPLUG the cable from the MB that goes to these devices to prevent the Windows installation from assigning the drive letters out of sequence... 2. There is NO problem with using a CD to reinstall XP rather than the recovery partition... BUT, when you do it you MUST delete the current C: partition then create a new partition which should be reconized as the C: drive, you then format that partition and install the OS... 3. If there is a recovery partition it will NOT be assigned a drive letter...it is a hidden partition...or at least it should be...When you get to the point in the installation, after you pres F8 for the license agreement, the next screen will show the various parititions and the assigned drive letters...you should have only a C:\ partition unless the user created a D: partition for some reason... 4. I think the easiest fix is to reformat and reinstall XP... You can edit the INI file and direct the second partition as the boot device and lable it as C:...but is had been years since I have played with it... 5. You might try googling for something like switching boot partitions xp or similiar... I suspect you will need to reinstall to get it correct... Good luck