290.xx drivers and No C: drive, do not install. If You have no C: drive in Your Windows PC, Do not install any drivers from 290.36 and 290.53 as both have the file NVCPLSetupInt.exe and It wants to install only to Drive C:, Even If one has No C: Drive, so the install aborts and one has to reinstall the last driver one had installed, since If one installs any other driver, clean or not will result in reboot BSODs, Hopefully Nvidia will fix this soon as I've posted an alert over on their forum about this error...

See NO C: Drive...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I'm relaying this through the 'back door', Since I think you should really be entitled to have no C drive if you want. Please be prepared to provide more information if they ask me for it.

Jason

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"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

I'm relaying this through the 'back door', Since I think you should really be entitled to have no C drive if you want. Please be prepared to provide more information if they ask me for it.

Jason

Sure no problem... :)

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

You can emulate the C: drive by e.g.:
subst C: D:\C_Drive

Associates a path with a drive letter.

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

  drive1:        Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
  [drive2:]path  Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
                 a virtual drive.
  /D             Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

(To survive a reboot during driver install maybe you need to use RegEdit and put the command in the Run key (this is on XP 32 bit, is it the same on Win 7 64 bit?):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
D:\WINDOWS\system32\subst.exe C: D:\C_Drive
)

Definitely NVIDIA have to not use some hard-coded disk/path
but use instead %HOMEDRIVE% or %SystemDrive% or %TEMP%

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

I found this on the 290.53 thread on the Nvidia forums:

StratosD wrote:

For you guys without a C drive, I will tell you how I fixed that issue for myself. I simply plugged in a USB drive and it was automatically labeled as my C drive. If your pc doesn't label it C then go to Control Panel, System and Security, Create and format hard disk partitions. Locate the usb drive, right click and choose Change Drive Letter and drive paths. Designate the usb drive as C. It should now be the C drive on your pc, now simply install the drivers where you want (D drive on my pc) and at the end of the installation simply delete the NVIDIA folder created on your usb drive because it's only temporary anyway. You can then change the letter label designated for the usb drive back to whatever it was or leave it (or do nothing if it was automatically labeled as C as on my pc). Enjoy the new drivers.

I don't know if this will work or not, In theory Ir should, But as soon as I can I'll try It.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok step 1 complete, I renamed drive F:\ as Drive C:\ and changed It's path, I did this in Windows 7 Pro x64 using Computer Management, subsection - Disk Management, This is an Administrative set of tools, Now It has 3.72GB of space as Drive C:\, Sometime on the 22nd when there is enough light, I'll try and install 290.53. Oh and Drive C:\ is formatted as FAT32...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Ok step 1 complete, I renamed drive F:\ as Drive C:\ and changed It's path, I did this in Windows 7 Pro x64 using Computer Management, subsection - Disk Management, This is an Administrative set of tools, Now It has 3.72GB of space as Drive C:\, Sometime on the 22nd when there is enough light, I'll try and install 290.53. Oh and Drive C:\ is formatted as FAT32...

Step 2 test NVCPLSetupInt.exe on Drive "C:\" worked, "C:\" was used as a temporary drive, drive was empty before and after test, program erased any files It made, Step 3 will be performed on the 22nd and then 290.53 will be installed.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Can you now acknowledge that you are doing just what Horacio suggested here:
"What Ive said is that you can make/add a virtual "C:" using a mapped network drive, a ramdrive or a pendrive, and then the nvidia driver setup wont fail when trying to use the "C:" for the temp folder."
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66422&nowrap=true#1179526

... and your answer was:
"Ok, well setup is trying to make and install a control panel to the address as shown in the picture below. So what You suggest just will not work, Ok? End of line..."

;)


I used similar fake drives 25-30 years ago on MS-DOS by:
subst A: C:\SomePath

... as some very old programs wanted to use only files on A: floppy


So it's known old technique to trick the software "to go where no software has gone before" ... ;)

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Can you now acknowledge that you are doing just what Horacio suggested here:
"What Ive said is that you can make/add a virtual "C:" using a mapped network drive, a ramdrive or a pendrive, and then the nvidia driver setup wont fail when trying to use the "C:" for the temp folder."
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=66422&nowrap=true#1179526

... and your answer was:
"Ok, well setup is trying to make and install a control panel to the address as shown in the picture below. So what You suggest just will not work, Ok? End of line..."

;)


I used similar fake drives 30 years ago on MS-DOS by:
subst A: C:\SomePath

... as some very old programs wanted to use only files on A: floppy


So it's known old technique to trick the software "to go where no software has gone before" ... ;)

No, This is not a virtual drive, It is actually now C:\...

This not drive substitution as used in Dos 3.3-6.0 either, I used DOS(PC & MS) before some here were born.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

No, This is not a virtual drive, It is actually now C:\...

And what you will call "a virtual drive"?

For me any of this is virtual drive:
subst C: D:\C_Drive
mapped network drive
ramdrive
Alcohol 120% virtual DVD
pendrive (Flash stick - it is chip of memory pretending to be disk, and you successfully mapped it to letter C: instead of F:)


If you don't like "a virtual drive" call it "a fake drive"
The idea was clear - use any easy way to put something writable as drive C:


The only problem is - during driver install you may need to reboot several times,
the question is - will this USB "drive" be mapped/mounted to/on letter C:
before the video driver install want to continue?

Map of USB stick requires drivers for USB (chipset) to be loaded and drivers for your USB-drive-controller (which is inside the USB stick) to be loaded in memory.

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

No, This is not a virtual drive, It is actually now C:\...

And what you will call "a virtual drive"?

For me any of this is virtual drive:
subst C: D:\C_Drive
mapped network drive
ramdrive
Alcohol 120% virtual DVD
pendrive (Flash stick - it is chip of memory pretending to be disk, and you successfully mapped it to letter C: instead of F:)


If you don't like "a virtual drive" call it "a fake drive"
The idea was clear - use any easy way to put something writable as drive C:

Go away, It's not a virtual drive, It's path was not remapped, Its path was changed permanently and the drive letter was changed, This is Windows 7 Pro, Not DOS. I've been using computers since 1980, so I ought to know the difference.

Here's what Computer Management says:


Horacio does deserve credit though for the idea of the drive, but It would not work as a virtual drive or a ramdrive for Me, as I don't have either, the drive is a USB Flash Drive and yes technically It could be a Pen drive...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Go away, It's not a virtual drive, It's path was not remapped, Its path was changed permanently and the drive letter was changed, This is Windows 7 Pro, Not DOS. I've been using computers since 1980, so I ought to know the difference.

OK, you invented the wheel (after StratosD an no-one else [Edit] OK, you added: Horacio does deserve credit though for the idea of the drive).
Do you continue to think that only USB drive solution will/may work and not any other solution that supplies anything writable at letter C: ?

I'm almost sure that subst C: D:\C_Drive or driver/program for RAM-drive will work either.

You say "I don't have ramdrive" but we are talking about "software RAM drive" - not "hardware RAM drive":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_disk


~1980 or 1981 I used this :)

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

Go away, It's not a virtual drive, It's path was not remapped, Its path was changed permanently and the drive letter was changed, This is Windows 7 Pro, Not DOS. I've been using computers since 1980, so I ought to know the difference.

OK, you invented the wheel (after StratosD an no-one else [Edit] OK, you added: Horacio does deserve credit though for the idea of the drive).
Do you continue to think that only USB drive solution will/may work and not any other solution that supplies anything writable at letter C: ?

~1980 or 1981 I used this :)

I don't have any virtual software or possibly the ability to run that on an i5 750 cpu, Nor any ram drive software, nor much interest in any either, I'm broke dang It, ok? And I doubt most do have the software for either idea, but people do have flash drives...

We had 5.25" 180k SSSD floppys and Corvus 5MB hdds, sure they were full height 5.25" MFM format, but they did exist...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Our Corvus (exactly that brand HDD) was connected (by some kind of network cable)
to ~20 Apple II+ computers in ~1982 (in Math department of Sofia university)

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- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

~1980 or 1981 I used this :)

1970...

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Our Corvus (exactly that brand HDD) was connected (by some kind of network cable)
to ~20 Apple II+ computers in ~1982 (in Math department of Sofia university)

The one We had access to was connected to an Atari 800 w/48K ram, a computer that could display 256 colors on the screen all at once, an 8bit computer running at 1.79MHz...

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

~1980 or 1981 I used this :)

1970...

Oh wow, old computers, I wonder if any from back then survive, outside of a museum? Nice find though. Magnetic Tapes folks, Reel to Reel, the lady is changing one at the time, nice legs too, whoever She was.

Punch cards, were almost gone by 1980/81 I was told by an instructor in 1981.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Magnetic Tapes folks, Reel to Reel, the lady is changing one at the time, nice legs too, whoever She was.

:D How did you managed to see the legs, 1000% zoom?

Punch cards, were almost gone by 1980/81 I was told by an instructor in 1981.

Oh, No
In Bulgaria (ask Raistmer about Russia/USSR) Punch cards were in use maybe till 1985 or even 1989

---

 


- ALF - "Find out what you don't do well ..... then don't do it!" :)
 

paper tape forevaaaaa!





edit: I was using this stuff in the mid 70's

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Magnetic Tapes folks, Reel to Reel, the lady is changing one at the time, nice legs too, whoever She was.

:D How did you managed to see the legs, 1000% zoom?

Punch cards, were almost gone by 1980/81 I was told by an instructor in 1981.

Oh, No
In Bulgaria (ask Raistmer about Russia/USSR) Punch cards were in use maybe till 1985 or even 1989

Zoom? No just the pic on the lcd monitor @ 1440*900.

Sorry, I forgot about the Soviet sphere.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's