markk

iTrader: (2)

ok im running M.E long story - wont upgrade to any of my XP discs

so, the prob - apart from having to run ME, i cant get ME to recognise i have two hard disks, i have one with everyday shit, the other with business stuff on it, the bios recognises both no problem, so why cant i access it from windows ?

cheers

mark

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

I had the same problem running win 98 (which I still am on this machine with no trouble), Nige (Sketch) helped me out, and found a patch to download from the windows website

Don't ask me what where and when tho, but it bugged me for hours too, I could see it, BIOS could see it but windows couldn't.

markk

iTrader: (2)

yeh thats the problem ive got

up for the knowledgable ones !

markk

iTrader: (2)

bttt

Billabong

Is the second drive's jumper settings set to slave or autodetect?

markk

iTrader: (2)

there set to slave , and the one with the os on is set to primary - all woked on xp before the primary was formatted = now im back on ME it wont recognise the fookin drive -

Billabong

Think ME can only read FAT/FAT32 drives, I'll bet your other disk is likely NTFS and so cannot be seen.

This may help if that's the case: http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilitie...Windows98.html

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

I went through all that Bill and got nowhere.

98 and ME can only recognise drives of smallish sizes. When you add a large drive to it it wont see it. I was adding a 80Gig second drive and was getting nowhere.

You will need to download the patch Mark as its a known bug.

markk

iTrader: (2)

from a quick read of that , i need to be able to specify a drive label ? that i dont have, windows doesnt see it at all but the bios does on start up

markk

iTrader: (2)

im only trying to use 2 x 40gig drives

markk

iTrader: (2)

dont know why my comp wont upgrade to xp on my upgrade disc, just locks up and crashes - done it loadsa times before inthe past

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

Mark they wont see anything (added as a second) above about 25 .... its a known bug/error.

Go hunting on the windows knowledge bases for it

DanRSturbo

Simple solution.

Get Windows XP Professional And do a fresh install, formatting your primary drive

markk

iTrader: (2)

tried that, my copy wont work for some reason - just locks up on the windows setup screen


was up till late last night looking and tbh was very confusing what i found - but didnt really find and patches

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

Sketch found it for me in about 5 mins - try sending him a PM

Sketch

I've just seen this.....

I remember sorting your problem for you Tony Cant remember what exactly it was i found though to sort it

Markk........ I'll have a think for ya mate

Sketch

AFter half an hour os trying to find what I found for Tony, im now thinking that Tony's problem was slightly different....

IIRC you could see your hard drive, but it was saying it was a lot smaller than it actually was.

Its probably quite likely Bill has got the right idea with his post above ^^

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

Nope, I could see it, BIOS could see it but windows couldn't - so we couldn't give it a drive letter etc - just the same as Marks problem with Win ME.

Jim Galbally

probably NTFS as bill says... right click "my computer... MAnage" in logical disk management, does the drive show up there as type "unknown"? if so windows is seeing it but t contains no readable data (ie it's NTFS!) altho i THINK winME can ran ntfs partitions?

get rid of winME NOW it's SOOOO shit (win98 is better, believe me!) just get a decent XP disk off a mate or get sum1 to post u a copy TRUST ME

WinME is just way too buggy...

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

Win ME dosn't have "right click > manage" options tho' Jim (or certainly 98 didn't) we tried all these options when I had the problem.

markk

iTrader: (2)

as above , can read it to manage it tried to and loaded the convert thing for ntfs but it asks to assign a drive letter - and i cant because i dont know what it is

and i really need my work stuff now

Billabong

Mark just give it any free letter, e.g. E: or F: for example (assuming main HDD is C: and CD/DVD drive is D: )

If you were using the 'work' disc on an XP system then I'm fairly sure it would have been NTFS.

Only other solution I can offer is to put your 'work' HDD is someone's XP PC as a slave and burn the required data to DVD's - put data on main HDD so you know it's 'safe' and format 'work' disc as FAT32. I personally agree about WinME being crap for what it's worth - even W98SE is preferable to ME if XP isn't an option.

markk

iTrader: (2)

i cant assign a letter to it because i can see it in windows bill, i know what your saying, even that program wont accept and letter as it just keeps telling me its not mounted as an ntfs drive,

i agree and i had forgot how crap ME was, i do have a copy of 98se, think im gonna load that, and yeh remove the drive and fit it to another comp is gonna be the only way i think

cheers guys

mark

markk

iTrader: (2)

just as another in case this is what the program is showing me



does that make any sence ?

AndyBlackFRST

If you run Fdisk from the dos prompt and remopve extended partition for the 2nd drive and also remove it from primary partition.

Once you have done this, re-setup the partition in there and restart.. This will allow you to re-format the drive for use with Fat32

markk

iTrader: (2)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - its got all my important stuff on it !

Billabong

Andy - he needs the data off it first!

Mark, how many partitions are on your master C drive, as your pic above show C & D drives -D: could possibly be the 'work' disc - try right clicking that?

Mark, if you get stuck, I will happily burn the contents of your spare drive to DVD (if you have a dvd drive to read from?) and return both to you (fully confidential of course, but I realise data is often sensitive and you may not wish to do that). Hopefully someone closer to you can assist.

markk

iTrader: (2)

that 'd' has only just appeared as a local disk

but when i try to access it it asks me if i want to format it ?

i only have the one partition on 'c' so that must be the other drive ?

so is there a way i can look at it without having to fromat it ? ive tried to put location D into the ntfs program and it still only asks me if i want to format it ?

any ideas ? this is much appreciated guys

Billabong

Did you follow the installation instructions and copy the required files from somewhere?

e.g.

NTFS.SYS: this file is located at \system32\drivers\ntfs.sys
NTOSKRNL.EXE: this file is located at \system32\ntoskrnl.exe
AUTOCHK.EXE: this file is located at \system32\autochk.exe
NTDLL.DLL: this file is located at \system32\ntdll.dll
C_437.NLS: this file is located at \system32\c_437.nls
C_1252.NLS: this file is located at \system32\c_1252.nls
L_INTL.NLS: this file is located at \system32\l_intl.nls

markk

iTrader: (2)

ermmmmm well i just loaded the program, i didnt really understand the rest i did read about copying the files ( was very late as well ) but didnt know where to copy them from and to

Billabong

Will email you required files ...... 2.03MB zipped, can your email handle this?

markk

iTrader: (2)

lol - yeh i can do zipped files

just as a note, ive just swapped drives, the one im trying to access ive removed and fitted a 2.0gb drive in its place - and its found it no problems ? any use this info ?

cheers

Billabong

I meant the 2MB more than anything

Not really, unless you know if the 2GB drive was NTFS or FAT32.

markk

iTrader: (2)

no i dont know mate - this fookin computer is so unstable its untrue - im contantly fighting off errors and restarting etc etc - if i dissappear its finally done me in and ive burnt it on the drive

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

Mark as a short term measre split the new drive into 2 smaller sizes and I guarantee you it will see it as long as they are less than 32GB

Billabong

...assuming he hasn't burned it

Hope you get it sorted Mark, PC's can be, did I say can? ARE a pain in the RS!

NUTS RuS

iTrader: (35)

May go off hunting for the patch later - it sorted my exact same problem out

markk

iTrader: (2)

hi guys - managed to get back on , and im no closer as yet im gonna try and spend some more time looking into this ntfs stuff bill , but tbh - its a bit over my head, im sure the prob is what tony has said, ive got a spare drive so im gonna try and get win xp onto it from someone else then bit this me shit, just as an off chance would 98 se have the same problem with drive size ?

and tony - ive no idea how to partition a drive


cheers geezers

mark

Jim Galbally

98se wont read NTFS i know that much, dunno about this drive size bug tho

Billabong

XP is your best bet really Mark. Haven't run ME on any of my PC's, I stuck with W2000 Pro until I was satisfied that XP Pro was a good upgrade, lol.

I still think the issue most likely lies with your 'work' hdd being NTFS, so W98SE wouldn't fix that issue as Jim says. If it was the size problem, I'd expect your PC to see the drive and be able to access it, but report its size as lower than it is.

Out of interest, do you know what bios your PC runs on - should tell you briefly when the PC first starts.... (I don't think you have a bios issue, as you say the bios can see the second drive, just wondering)