Hard disk no longer available in XP after installing Vista

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Guest

Hello all,

I just installed Vista on my machine on a new partition, so that I now have
a dual boot configuration for XP/Vista. This basically works.

Now I have 3 physical hard disks, each with more partitions. The first one,
which is a "basic" disk on which the XP and Vista partitions are, works well
on bot OSes. However, the other two, which are "dynamic" disks, don't seem to
work in XP any longer since I installed Vista.

When I open "Computer Management" > "Disk Management" on XP, it shows both
disks in the list, but as being "offline" (and no partition data). There is a
context menu command called "Reactivate Disk" that is supposed to be used in
such cases, but it doesn't work (just displays a message that the action has
failed). Under Vista, the disks work without problems.

I think I can rule out a device-specific problem as it is the same with two
seperate disks. It might be a problem specific to dynamic disks. Is it
possible that Vista has modified the data structure of the disk so that it is
not accessible from XP anymore? Or maybe any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Michael
 
Michael Feld said:
Hello all,

I just installed Vista on my machine on a new partition, so that I now
have
a dual boot configuration for XP/Vista. This basically works.

Now I have 3 physical hard disks, each with more partitions. The first
one,
which is a "basic" disk on which the XP and Vista partitions are, works
well
on bot OSes. However, the other two, which are "dynamic" disks, don't seem
to
work in XP any longer since I installed Vista.

When I open "Computer Management" > "Disk Management" on XP, it shows both
disks in the list, but as being "offline" (and no partition data). There
is a
context menu command called "Reactivate Disk" that is supposed to be used
in
such cases, but it doesn't work (just displays a message that the action
has
failed). Under Vista, the disks work without problems.

I think I can rule out a device-specific problem as it is the same with
two
seperate disks. It might be a problem specific to dynamic disks. Is it
possible that Vista has modified the data structure of the disk so that it
is
not accessible from XP anymore? Or maybe any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Michael
Click to expand...


Crikey! Just out of interest, and it's a long shot, I don't suppose that
the two non-working discs are formatted FAT32...?
 
I have been swapping disks a lot recently and it's quite common for two to
end up with the same drive letter so one does not show up in My Computer.
Just using disk management to give it some arbitrary drive letter restores
access.

(Same with USB drives etc).

It is possible that XP is allocating letters which clash. I don't advise
messing with drives that have an OS on them but it's not always possible to
keep letters the same on dual boot systems (especially with half a dozen
removable drives in use).

I find it helps to give drives a meaningful name too.

Hope it's something as simple as this...

Charlie
 
Charlie,

How are you? I hope you are doing well.

I haven't seen you at securecomp in quite awhile.


Take care,

Michael
 
Actually this is the first time I've visited any newsgroups since the
surgery, since then (Dec 11th) I've built a number of machines and finally
got around to installing Vista on here. Boy is it fun trying to find drivers
and things that work with "all" your hardware. Example Linksys wireless card
that works on XPP and XPH 32 bit and on Vista 64 bit but no way on XP 64 bit
etc.

Have actually been rather busy.

And I don't know if drive letters is related to the OP's problem but I've
certainly seen it a few times revently :)

Charlie
 
Good to hear you are doing better and have been
keeping busy.

Take care of yourself.

Don't let Vista stress you too much.... cause it can. :-)

-Michael
 
Hi MooJuice,

no, all drives are formatted with NTFS.

But I have some more information. After I try to "Reactivate" the disk using
Disk Management (as describes in my original post), I am getting two entries
in the system event log:

Event ID: 1500 Source: LDM
Disk group Pc1Dg0: Errors in some configuration copies:
Disk Harddisk1, copy 1: Block 1: A format error was found in the
configuration copy
Disk Harddisk2, copy 1: Block 1: A format error was found in the
configuration copy

Event ID: 2 Source: LDM
INTERNAL Error - The disk group contains no valid configuration copies.
(C10000B6).

This sounds really scary to me! However, the curious thing is that both
disks work in Vista.

Any new ideas?


Regards,
Michael
 
Hi Charlie,

Charlie Tame said:
I have been swapping disks a lot recently and it's quite common for two to
end up with the same drive letter so one does not show up in My Computer.
Just using disk management to give it some arbitrary drive letter restores
access.
Click to expand...

It's not single drives that have disappeared or have problems, it's the
whole disk (or some kind of master data structure of the disk). I.e. in Disk
Management, I don't see any drives/partitions on the disks in question for
which I could change a drive letter at all, just two empty disks with an
"offline" icon.
It is possible that XP is allocating letters which clash. I don't advise
messing with drives that have an OS on them but it's not always possible to
keep letters the same on dual boot systems (especially with half a dozen
removable drives in use).
Click to expand...

Well, Vista auto-assigned its own drive letters to the disks, which I
changed... could this have caused such a serious problem for XP?
Hope it's something as simple as this...
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I'm afraid it's not...


Regards,
Michael
 
Michael Feld said:
Hello all,

I just installed Vista on my machine on a new partition, so that I now have
a dual boot configuration for XP/Vista. This basically works.

Now I have 3 physical hard disks, each with more partitions. The first one,
which is a "basic" disk on which the XP and Vista partitions are, works well
on bot OSes. However, the other two, which are "dynamic" disks, don't seem to
work in XP any longer since I installed Vista.

When I open "Computer Management" > "Disk Management" on XP, it shows both
disks in the list, but as being "offline" (and no partition data). There is a
context menu command called "Reactivate Disk" that is supposed to be used in
such cases, but it doesn't work (just displays a message that the action has
failed). Under Vista, the disks work without problems.

I think I can rule out a device-specific problem as it is the same with two
seperate disks. It might be a problem specific to dynamic disks. Is it
possible that Vista has modified the data structure of the disk so that it is
not accessible from XP anymore? Or maybe any other ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Michael
Click to expand...
 
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