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I left Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 to install itself on a Dell server with two SCSI hard drives. During Windows setup, both the drives were unformatted, so I chose the first to format with NTFS.

After logging into Windows for the first time, the setup process wanted to continue, but stalled because of two errors/warnings:

  • a network adapter must be installed, enabled, and configured with TCP/IP
  • your paging file size may be insufficient

Checking the page file settings revealed the OS had installed on the F drive. The C drive was removable storage, and I'm not sure where this storage is located. Perhaps it is the 2nd (unformatted) hard drive.

The page file size on the F drive was 2 GB, which I think is adequate, but the C drive was not writable, so there was no page file on C. Is this preventing SBS 2003 setup from continuing? If so, is the solution to make the F drive become the C drive?

If so, how do I get around the message which essentially says "You may not change the drive letter of the primary partition".

If changing the drive letter is not possible, how do I allow setup to continue when it thinks the page file size is not large enough?

Update: I'd mistakenly placed the network cable in a network port on the server which had a spanner icon above it. There was a 2nd network port I could place the cable in which I missed earlier, which now connects the server properly to the LAN. Setup could now continue, as there was a checkbox which said I could "continue despite these warnings" (about the insufficient page size).

So, I guess changing the drive letter is not strictly required, but it is ideal.

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You should probably figure out where your drives are located before even asking this question. The physical configuration of a computer is pretty important when setting up a OS I would think. – surfasb Oct 12 '11 at 11:16
@surfasb: There was a choice of two disks: something like disk0 and disk1, or disk1 and disk2. I chose the former (in each case). – Steve Oct 12 '11 at 13:48
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There was a choice of two disks: something like disk0 and disk1, or disk1 and disk2. I chose the former (in each case)

Which reiterates my point. You need to figure out which disk is disk 0.

The OS has no idea (and should not know) which disk is a physical disk or even if it is a physical disk at all. The OS is just going to report what BIOS is telling it.

The only way to change where the boot partition lives is to move all the files to the new locations. You won't be able to do this from inside Windows. But you can use the recovery console to robocopy all the files over to the disk you want (F in this case). And of course, get your bootloader in order.

Windows will always assign C to whatever the boot partition is. So when you boot up, your F disk will now be C.

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Only one disk has been formatted, with one partition on this disk. The OS was installed on this partition, and presumably it is the boot partition? – Steve Oct 13 '11 at 1:12
@Steve: Yes. I always forget how confusing that sounds. In Windows, the boot partition is where the Windows folder is. The System partition is where the boot files are. (Lame eh?) In your case, it sounds like they are the same partition. Just copy the files over, and make sure to mark the partition as Active. – surfasb Oct 13 '11 at 9:18
But there is only 1 partition in the entire computer, and it is currently F. From your logic, Windows should be calling it C, not F. – Steve Oct 13 '11 at 16:19
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