I recently removed a second hard drive from my computer (Dell w/ Windows XP). Now I cannot install or uninstall programs because the drive path (E) is no longer there. I get an error message: Error 1327. Invalid Drive E:\. I disabled the drive in the setup utility and it is no longer visible in disk management. How do I correct this?

nmkmdy

What does drive E: refer to in your setup as that is clearly what is causing the problem.

Installation source paths can be saved in the Windows registry. If the drive letter of the path is later changed or removed, the registry entries now reference a non-existent path. These references can be changed to the new drive letter if the original drive was re-lettered, changed to C:\.. or deleted by searching the entire registry for all instances of the missing drive text, in your case "E:\", using the REGEDIT utility. WARNING: Careless use of REGEDIT may result in an inoperable computer.

Unfortunately, even if the missing drive letter references are eliminated from the registry, uninstallers may still not work as any installation files that are required for removal that were present on the original drive are now also missing. Manual uninstallation of the software's files and registry keys may be required.

This problem often occurs when installing software from a removable drive or a network drive that may not always be available. It can be avoided by copying the installation file or media to a location on the C: drive first and then running the install from there when originally installing the software.