disabled hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter wmcneely
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wmcneely

Some how stupid me got into the device manager and disabled my HD.
What can I do to get it re-enabled? When I put in the Win 2k CD the
drive is not seen. I am on an IBM Thinkpad from about 1999.
 
Some how stupid me got into the device manager and disabled my HD.
What can I do to get it re-enabled? When I put in the Win 2k CD the
drive is not seen. I am on an IBM Thinkpad from about 1999.
Click to expand...

Have you tried going in under safe mode and renabling?
 
How do I get to safe mode with the CD?

On startup, watch for "For troubleshooting and advanced startup options
for Windows 2000, press F8" From the resulting menu, select Safe Mode.
 
Tracey said:
On startup, watch for "For troubleshooting and advanced startup options
for Windows 2000, press F8" From the resulting menu, select Safe Mode.
Click to expand...

This is what I get!

the CD loads a bunch of files.
Then I get a screen that says: "Welcome to Setup"
"This portion of the setup program prepares Microsoft Windows 2000 to
run on your computer"

Then 3 choices:
1) To set up windows 2000 now press "ENTER"
2) To repair a windows installation press "R"
3) To quit press "F3"

When I press "R" I get that a hard drive was not found!

Do I do (1) above? I am leary of that!
 
[email protected] said:
This is what I get!

the CD loads a bunch of files.
Then I get a screen that says: "Welcome to Setup"
"This portion of the setup program prepares Microsoft Windows 2000 to
run on your computer"

Then 3 choices:
1) To set up windows 2000 now press "ENTER"
2) To repair a windows installation press "R"
3) To quit press "F3"

When I press "R" I get that a hard drive was not found!

Do I do (1) above? I am leary of that!
Click to expand...

Actually I get the same message regardless of what I press!
 
Actually I get the same message regardless of what I press!
Click to expand...

boot up without the cd and press F8 as detailed above.

Are you 100% sure the drive has'nt failed?
 
Steve said:
boot up without the cd and press F8 as detailed above.

Are you 100% sure the drive has'nt failed?
Click to expand...

Well it was working just fine until I did the disable thing in the
device manager.

I did the F8 thing and got a diagnostic window and ran the test and
everything was marked "OK" except the HDD1 and HDD2.

Could I possibly get to this by plugging in an external HD and booting
with it and then getting to the device manager and re-enabling the
internal drive?

By the way thanks for the help Steve and Tracy
 
Well it was working just fine until I did the disable thing in the
device manager.

I did the F8 thing and got a diagnostic window and ran the test and
everything was marked "OK" except the HDD1 and HDD2.

Could I possibly get to this by plugging in an external HD and booting
with it and then getting to the device manager and re-enabling the
internal drive?
Click to expand...

I fell sure there must be a reason why no one else has suggested this
but fwiw:

Can't you recover by simply pressing F8 at bootup and booting to "Last
Known Good" ?
 
Sid said:
I fell sure there must be a reason why no one else has suggested this
but fwiw:

Can't you recover by simply pressing F8 at bootup and booting to "Last
Known Good" ?
Click to expand...

Sid,

I tried that but the computer sees no hard drive so it cannot even do
that!
So I was hoping that some one would confirm that I could use the USB
port and boot frpo an external drive there and get at it that way.
 
Well it was working just fine until I did the disable thing in the
device manager.
Click to expand...

Have you tried going into the PC's BIOS and checking the disk is found at
that level, if it's not then it's not the OS's "problem" but a hardware
issue. Could be a drive or controller problem.
I did the F8 thing and got a diagnostic window and ran the test and
everything was marked "OK" except the HDD1 and HDD2.

Could I possibly get to this by plugging in an external HD and booting
with it and then getting to the device manager and re-enabling the
internal drive?
Click to expand...
I doubt it as the problem seems deeper than the OS to me, plus you'd have to
do an OS install onto the external drive, which could be fraught with it's
own problems (drivers etc).
 
I tried that but the computer sees no hard drive so it cannot even do
that!
So I was hoping that some one would confirm that I could use the USB
port and boot frpo an external drive there and get at it that way.
Click to expand...

Hmm - I'm surprised that you can disable it so much in the OS that you
can't get this far with it. After all, the machine has to do the first
part of the OS boot before it can even find out that the drive is marked
as disabled by the OS. And by this point in the boot process ("last
known good"), it hasn't even loaded the registry.

Sounds more like it's hardware-disabled to me. I think Steve is on the
right track.
 
Sid said:
Hmm - I'm surprised that you can disable it so much in the OS that you
can't get this far with it. After all, the machine has to do the first
part of the OS boot before it can even find out that the drive is marked
as disabled by the OS. And by this point in the boot process ("last
known good"), it hasn't even loaded the registry.

Sounds more like it's hardware-disabled to me. I think Steve is on the
right track.
Click to expand...

It could be that I actually disabled the controller. The IDE
controller?
How would I attack that problem then?
 
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