[PATCH] [RFC] Make drive C always a "Local disk"

Ben Klein shacklein at gmail.com
Sun Mar 8 19:56:06 CDT 2009


2009/3/9 Scott Ritchie <scott at open-vote.org>:
> Ben Klein wrote:
>> 2009/3/8 Scott Ritchie <scott at open-vote.org>:
>>> David Gerard wrote:
>>>> 2009/3/8 King InuYasha <ngompa13 at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> Drive C: is not necessarily the truly central drive. I have seen Windows
>>>>> installs that installed on D: and have C: as a permanently mounted network
>>>>> share. To assume that drive C: is always what it is... is blasphemy.
>>>>> However, Wine does make this assumption, and probably the patch would be
>>>>> appropriate. Just throwing that out there. However, I have also seen wine
>>>>> installs onto a network where the WINEPREFIX is a network share so that
>>>>> multiple people can use the same program.
>>>> This is true. I've seen a Windows box at work which has the system on
>>>> the E: drive and no C: drive at all. WHAT.
>>>>
>>>> That said, is there any program in the world that would balk at
>>>> installing on C:
>>> No, and Vista now defaults to always reassigning the system drive to C:\
>>>  - it's not bad for us to copy that behavior.
>>
>> ALL versions of Windows *default* to C: being the first (primary)
>> harddisk partition detected, and being the partition where the system
>> gets installed. Configurations that don't have C: have been
>> specifically configured as such, which is still possible with Wine.
>>
>> What I'm unsure of, but suspect is so, is that it is impossible, on
>> native Windows (XP, Vista, possibly server versions too?), for C: to
>> be a network share. I'm sure it's true of Win9x :)
>
> This isn't strictly true with XP and earlier: if you had other drives
> (even sometimes card readers and USB sticks) available at install time,
> often Windows would install itself onto an E:\ drive.  Some systems
> would run into trouble after adding a disk because Windows would
> reassign the new disk to C:\ and the old install would move off C:\,
> breaking some apps.

In cases like this, doesn't the installer think it's installing on to
C:, but then when the system boots up (with complete USB mass storage
drivers, for example), the driver order could change? I know Win9x in
particular involved nasty drive ordering rules (or lack thereof) if
you insert a new harddrive or USB stick - I had a lot of fun setting
my CD-ROM drive to X: so it wouldn't keep moving around and confusing
games :)

I'm also fully aware of drive remapping in WinXP, and that "system"
drive doesn't have to be C:, but as it has been noted a lot of
installers assume C: is at least available, and in some cases assume
that's where "Program Files" and "Windows" directories are.

> On Vista, however, when you add that new disk Windows keeps its system
> drive as C:\, even if the new disk is earlier in priority.  You can also
> have multiple installs of Windows on a system, and while the XP ones may
> be happy to boot from E:\, the Vista ones will also rename it to C:\ for
> you once inside.

If I read this right, Vista will boot off just about any partition,
but the partition it boots off will be mapped to C: before anything
else. That sounds like C: will always be a local disk to me! :)

> So, that said, I'm not sure it's possible to have a non C:\ drive as a
> system drive on Vista.  If so, it certainly requires more configuring
> than XP does, where it would happen on accident.
>
> Thanks,
> Scott Ritchie

2009/3/9 Paul Chitescu <paulc at voip.null.ro>:
> Having the C: drive always present and always local is a good idea and will
> save users _lots_ of trouble.

And Wine already spends quite some effort in ensuring that drive_c
exists, from what I can see. There also appears to be a lot of
hardcoded references to C: in the registry. I've attached an analysis.
Before you ask, yes this was a completely fresh wineprefix created
with 1.1.16.
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