Problem recognising 2nd HD set as slave

  • Thread starter Thread starter James Williams
  • Start date Start date
J

James Williams

I am trying to help out a friend with a computer problem but what I am
trying to achieve may not be possible - any advice would be appreciated.

His computer runs Win XP Home but currently will not boot further than the
'Welcome' screen. We suspect a virus has cause the problem - someone else
was trying to help out but got stuck, and it's now been passed on to me to
help. The previous person seems sure a virus was responsible.

Re-formatting his hard disk is not yet an option as we need to recover the
data first.

I am therefore attempting to connect his HD to an old PC of mine, running
Win98, with his HD as Slave. This old PC has up to date virus software on it
and I hoped we might cure the problem this way.

My old PC works fine with the Master HD (40GB Maxtor) partitioned as C, D
and the Slave HD (8GB Maxtor) partitioned as E, F

So, I have simply swapped the Slave for the friend's HD (also a 40GB
Maxtor) - having changed the jumper to the correct pins for Slave per the
label on the disk.

The computer shows both drives OK in the BIOS (the Slave now shows as the
friend's 40GB instead of my 8GB so that's OK)
Device Manager shows both drives, and says both are working correctly.
However the Master shows up with 'drive letter assignment' C,D whislt the
slave shows no drive letters.

In Windows Explorer only the Master (C, D) show up - no sign of the Slave.

Is this because the friend's drive is incompatible with my system (even as a
slave) due to having Win XP on it? Or should that be OK but there's
something else I need to do.

Many thanks in advance
 
Win 98 will not be able to see XXP partition files if the partition is NTFS.

XP questions are more appropriate for an XP newsgroup.
 
Jeff Richards said:
Your friend's drive is almost certainly partitioned as NTFS. Windows 9x
will not see NTFS partitions. If you want to access the drive to backup his
data, you can get a utility to read the files at:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfswin98.shtml
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help and advice, especially to you Jeff.

As this question relates precisely to fitting a hard drive into a machine
running Windows 98, I see no reason why anyone should suggest these are the
wrong groups to ask in.
 
Your friends real problem appeared to be not being able to 'full boot the
system.

Your inability to see the drive in a 98 box is simply related to your
approache.g. if you mounted the drive in an XP box you would see the files
and could copy them off but that really does not solve the real problem.

The XP newsgroup may be able to tell you how to solve the real problem.
 
Please read the question. James has already discussed the problem with other
people, and has concluded that a reformat is the most likely appropriate
fix. However, "Re-formatting his hard disk is not yet an option as we need
to recover the data first." James has posted his question in a W98 group
because he is using a W98 machine to recover the data. When that task is
achieved he might re-consider whether the people in the XP group have some
better advice for removing the virus, but the newest XP viruses insert
themselves so thoroughly into the OS that many people are recommending
wiping the drive and starting over.
 
Don Phillipson said:
These are not the best NGs to solicit.
Try MS WinXP groups or MS virus groups.
Click to expand...

For a moment I thought "what's with all the stupid top posters in this
thread?" Then I realized why: "microsoft.public.win98.disks.general"
 
chrisv said:
For a moment I thought "what's with all the stupid top posters in this
thread?" Then I realized why: "microsoft.public.win98.disks.general"
Click to expand...

It's an MVP requirement.
The other requirement is that the quoted part shall be wrecked.
Some even have the gall to add a link to .
 
Folkert Rienstra said:
It's an MVP requirement.
The other requirement is that the quoted part shall be wrecked.
Some even have the gall to add a link to .
Click to expand...

Read both groups often. MVP folks do a real good job doing the
requirements.
You do a good job insulting people, EO insulter.
 
Lil' Dave said:
"Folkert Rienstra" (e-mail address removed)> wrote in message news:[email protected]...

Read both groups often. MVP folks do a real good job doing the requirements.
Click to expand...

Yes, wasn't that what I said?
You do a good job insulting people, EO insulter.
Click to expand...

So you thought let's prove that you're not one of those. Good for you.
 
IF you want to read the NTSC drive on your computer, try to get a copy
of MandrakeMove and boot on it. You will then be able to read both
HDD, copy data from the slave to the master, then just format the
slave (i dont think you can do that under mandrake, but there is ways
to format and HDD with floppies.)
 
Back
Top