I have two simple (I think) questions. I installed a new SATA hard drive on my sone's computer. On MYCOMPUTER it lists the hard drive as drive I, I thought it would lists it as drrive C like the old one, is this a big deal, and can I rename the drive back to drive C.
The other question is vexing. At start up I get a bios screen that says press F1 to continue or press DELETE to enter set up. Windows is installed and everything is running fine put at reboot I always have to press F1 to continue, it does not enter WINDOWS start up automatically. I called Cyberpower tech support, the guy had me look in the BIOS (SATA is enabled)and had me change SATA ports from one to two, nothing fixed this, He advised flashing BIOS for possible fix but I always heard doing this is not a good idea. Its no big deal to do this extra step (pressing F1 to continue) but all my other computers load Windows auto matically, any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help.

You can't rename the drive in the traditional sense, but you can change the drive letter through computer management to any letter that is not currently used. If you right click my computer and choose manage, then select disk management near the bottom, what is listed for hard drives?

As for you second question, it sounds like you may have failed to install the sata drivers for the new drive.

RBest

Did you install the MBoard Chipset drivers?

Did you install Windows on the new SATA drive? Do you have a floppy disk drive? What size is the SATA drive? Does your WinXP installation CD contain at least SP1? Was the original harddrive a SATA drive?

My new hard drive was OEM, on the cover front it said Windows would install SATA drivers off of CD.

I used the recovery CD that came with the computer, I also used the MOBO driver CD to install all the drivrs. The SATA hard drive was 250gig and the Windows recovery CD had service pack 2 on it.

You state the manufacturer is self yet you have a recovery CD. That is why the question was asked.

In short, you need to either remove or at least reconfigure the original drive to not be the Master. I asked if the original drive was a SATA and you didn't state. That makes a difference on how you configure the system. The new drive MUST be configured as the boot drive in order to be configured as the C: drive. The old drive can have any other letter. You can reassign ANY other letter except C:.

Sorry for the confusion, MY computer is self built but as I stated in the initial post, this new SATA drive was for my son's computer.
The original drive was not SATA. As far as master, I thought SATA drives did not deal with master/slave configuations. I took the old hard drive out and now the computer just has the new SATA drive in it.

When you say the new drive MUST be configured as the boot drive, I am a little confused, are you talking about boot sequence in BIOS?

SATA drives are all master. However there may be multiple SATA ports that you can connect to.
Yes and no. You already have harrdrive set as one of the boot devices. However, when you have SATA drives there should be a separate selection to choose WHICH harddrive to boot to.

Clarify what you mean when you say you used the recovery CD. If this computer is not the computer that goes with the recovery cD you shouldn't be using it.

Do you own a copy of WinXP that goes with this computer?

I bought my son's computer from Cyberpower, they do not provide a Windows CD, but they do give you a Windows "recovery" CD, this is what they provide (and what I used) to reload Windows onto the new drive. I took the old hard drive out so the new SATA drive is the only hard drive in the computer. Windows was loaded correctly and the computer works fine, except for the two questions I had in my original post.

From my experience, certain recovery discs/XP setups with SATA drives will kick back the drive letter list after all removable drives. Unplug the removable drives BEFORE running the recovery disc - card readers, USB drives, and leave only the SATA and CD drive. If you don't, you're stuck with the drive letter you have because XP does not allow changing the boot drive's letter afterwards.

As for your BIOS issue, do you get any other message besides pressing F1? If not, have you tried going into BIOS and pressing whatever key for "BIOS defaults" and saving or just removing the battery/power for 30 sec. and resetting up your BIOS settings?

Yes, I tried setting BIOS defaults and removing battery.

I think you are right about the drive letters. The computer now has 4 removable drives letters CDEF, the CD-Rom drive as G, the CD-RW drive as H, and the hard drive as I.

You should NEVER install Windows while you have ANY removable drives connected. I suggest you remove all removable drives and reinstall WinXP. If the SATA is the only harddrive in the system it should default to C:. All remaining drive letters can be assigned as needed. You will be able to reinstall the original harddrive after WinXP is installed.

I did not have ANY removable drives connected during installation of Windows. I don't know why Windows listed these. Regarding re installing, I appreciate the help but after spending a few hours yesterday getting all his programs loaded and drivers updated, I will just live with this little bugaboo.

thanks everybody for your help and advice.