How to make your bootable CF FLASH drive show up as non-removable

I created a thread here, on how to use a 32 gig compact flash as a IDE SSD for your dated laptops. During my research I ran into a problem that the 32gig CF card stayed as a removable device, and while it did boot fine, XP still saw it as a removable device and would not allow a swap file to be created. XP never booted completely until I pressed "Ctrl+Alt+Del" after I entered my password. I found a way to install a new driver to tell XP that its a non-removable device. In the thread I post a few days ago, purchase those items and install XP as normal, then follow these directions after that. Its relatively easy, once you get the steps down. This must be done on the computer you just installed XP on using a CF card with the 44pin to CF converter.

I have included the USB drivers in this post. Here are the steps:

First download the the USBDRIVERS.ZIP file, extract it to your desktop and look for the cfadisk.inf file, open it in notepad and find the word "CHANGEME". Leave this file open as we will be pasting the device ID to that location in just a bit.

Go to device manager and locate your drive under "Disk Drives". Right click > Properties, then click the details tab. Highlight "Device instance id" then press "Ctrl+v".

Go back to your inf file, find CHANGE ME, delete it, then press "Ctrl+v". Be sure to remove any numbers after the "\". It should match the devices below it in terms of length. Save it.

Go back to the device manager > Disk drives > Right click > Properties of the drive. Click the driver TAB.

Press update driver, "Yes, this time only". > Next > "Install from a list or specific location (advanced)" Select "Don't search. I will chose the driver to install" > Click NEXT > Click Have disk > Point to the cfadisk.inf file in the folder on your desktop. > click open > click OK > Click NEXT. You may get a driver warning, ignore it. > Click YES > Click Continue Anyway > Click FINISH!

You're done! Close out of any programs, and reboot.

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With SSD's running on XP, it is good practice to Align the drive to 1024. Windows 7, does this during the installation, but XP does not do this. What is real nice, Acronis does this for you automatically. So after you have completed this task, Image your laptop then restore it back and your drive will be aligned for XP...