Missing harddrive after SP2 install

  • Thread starter Thread starter VernMan
  • Start date Start date
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VernMan

Anybody has any tips on how to let XP remember I have a 2nd hard drive
(F:) in the system? All was fine under SP1. I upgraded to SP2 and all
went well during the upgrade. The system rebooted and all looked
normal. The next day I power up the machine and I notice in Explorer
that the 2nd F: drive (Seagate ST380013A) is not listed. I go into
control panel, click on add new hardware, select that the hardware is
already present, then find my Seagate drive in the list of hardware. I
click on it, XP tells me the drive is working properly and then I
click on cancel. Now the drive is there, just fine. I have to do this
"add new hardware" trick every time I cold or warm boot now.
I uninstalled SP2 and all was fine again. When I re-installed SP2,
again that same problem occurs. I can't "initialize" that drive under
Disk Management because the drive is completely invisible unless I use
add-new-hardware in control panel. I am at my wits end here trying to
get my system under SP2 to recognize the F: drive at boot. It's
annoying to have to go into control panel each and every time I boot
to "activate" that drive that XP keeps telling me is "working
properly".
It's bizarre that when I go back to SP1 all of this ceases to occur.
But as soon as SP2 is installed here, XP keeps forgetting the second
drive.
Anybody else had this strange phenomenon occur? Any tips? I want to
keep SP2 but it is a PITA to have to "reinstall" that drive everytime
I boot up. I even tried to reformat that drive under SP2 and reinstall
all my stuff to it, but that didn't help any either. It just keeps
ignoring that drive at boot up.

==VernMan==
 
Here's what you need to do. Go to start, run type cmd. Then type format c:
and you should be all set.
 
Here's what you need to do. Go to start, run type cmd. Then type format c:
and you should be all set.
Click to expand...

You little child. You're even dumber then a skriptkiddie.
Windows won't let you format the C: drive from within windows.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits
 
VernMan, I know this issue has come up before. You might have better
success with dealing with it on the windowsxp.hardware newsgroup. Be sure
to let them know you can't initialize the drive in disk management because
disk management does not see the drive.

A couple of things I can add. SP2 installs with the XP firewall turned on
by default. It shouldn't block access to a separately installed drive but
it's something to check out. If you weren't using the XP firewall in the
past, just open Control Panel, open Windows Firewall and if it's enabled,
try disabling it and see if that resolves the issue.

Something else, if the controller for this drive has its own drivers, you
might want to check the Seagate site to see if they have updated versions.
Also, if your system happens to be using a VIA chipset, I'd check their site
as well and possibly the motherboard manufacturer's site for possible BIOS
updates. Although, if the system is recognizing the drive during bootup,
I'm dubious it's a BIOS issue.:-)
 
VernMan, I know this issue has come up before. You might have better
success with dealing with it on the windowsxp.hardware newsgroup. Be sure
to let them know you can't initialize the drive in disk management because
disk management does not see the drive.

A couple of things I can add. SP2 installs with the XP firewall turned on
by default. It shouldn't block access to a separately installed drive but
it's something to check out. If you weren't using the XP firewall in the
past, just open Control Panel, open Windows Firewall and if it's enabled,
try disabling it and see if that resolves the issue.

Something else, if the controller for this drive has its own drivers, you
might want to check the Seagate site to see if they have updated versions.
Also, if your system happens to be using a VIA chipset, I'd check their site
as well and possibly the motherboard manufacturer's site for possible BIOS
updates. Although, if the system is recognizing the drive during bootup,
I'm dubious it's a BIOS issue.:-)
Click to expand...


Thanks for the advice. I'll post the question to the xp.hardware
group. I'll post my complete hardware set up. I disable the XP
firewall (I have a hardware FW here on my network plus I also have
Conseal soft firewalls on all my machines on the network).
The Seagate website says I don't need any additional drivers for
windows XP. But I do have a VIA chipset, so maybe I'll give that a
swirl too.
Thanks again.

==VernMan==
 
You're welcome, good luck.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I got the same advice there as you gave me and did get the
latest driver for my VIA chipset and it fixed the problem!
I had no clue that such a minor detail as a VIA chipset driver could
have caused this bizarre problem.
But that's exactly what it was. Thanks a gazillion!
Merry Christmas

==Werner==
 
You're welcome.

Yes, unfortunately that can be the case, I've seen it often during beta
testing of software and OSs that VIA chipsets need to be updated. Hence,
when something such as this occurs, I'll make the recommendation to check
for such updated drivers.

Glad this resolved the issue for you.
 
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