Where is my Hard drive?

[AtomicMatter]

Ok, long story, Here we go

one of those, was working fine, now it ain't and I did nothin.

2400XP Tbred
Epox 8rda+
ASUS Geforce 4200 128DDR
Twinmos PC3200 512 Winbond
Windows XP Pro
Maxtor Diamond max 9 120 gig

Gets past post fine, correct beeps, just when the windows xp loading screen is about to come up I get a blank screen, and it just hangs there, just a blank screen. I left it for about an hour and a half while I went to watch shrek (was only thing on, ok?) still on the blank screen.

Tried safe mode, came with the same screen, tried last good settings too

did a full format from my other pc, got a "NTLDR is missing, press ctrl alt del to restart" message, I have tried booting from the cdrom. This was to try to get to the recovery console so I can get to fix my Master Boot record which i think is the problem.

I booted from floppy, cd drives came up as R: and S:
windows XP setup cd is in drive R:
when I try to run setup (R:\I386\winnt.exe)
the blue setup screen comes up and tells me that it
cannot continue because it cannot find a hard drive, fair duz, but i want the recovery console, not there.

I exited back to the prompt and tried getting to C:
not there, tried D:, E: etc nothing.
So why isn't my hard drive showing up in this prompt?

It IS showing up in the Post, I've even refreshed it in Bios, still there.

i tried installing windows XP on the drive while I had it hooked up to my other machine, and the drive still won't show up on the other pc, I tried swapping the IDE cables around (so all primaries are now sec and all secondaries are now pri) cd roms still showed up, hard drive didn't.

so before:
Pri mas - asus dvd
Pri sla - LG cdrw
Sec mas - Maxtor hdd

and after:
Pri mas - Maxtor hdd
Sec mas - asus dvd
Sec sla - LG cdrw

For smeg sake, why is it showing up in bios but not coming up as a drive letter, the drive works fine on this computer, I did a scan disk on it and also did a surface scan and found no errors, I also installed windows xp on it with no problems, so the drive is defo still working. This sucks, what could it possibly be.

How can I get to that recovery console from the cd, when I can't get into windows setup because it says I don't have a drive to install windows onto, infact, I installed the recovery console on that drive from this pc, but I can't get to it can I?

Infact, is this even what i need to do? Please please please help me guys, I am down on my knees here, look at my spec again THAT'S THE SYSTEM YOU WILL BE SAVING! I even resorted to the microsoft community groups, got no responce.

oh my life!

[cloasters]

After making sure that the HDD's jumper(s) are set properly, you might fdisk and then format the drive---while it's in the machine that "loses" this hard drive.

[CCW]

First off, it was working but then without you doing anything it wasnt?

Is that system overclocked?

Craig

[AtomicMatter]

nope, not overclocked, wouldn't dream of it till i get some proper case in and out takes.

Jumpers are fine, master for pc (spec above) and set to slave for this pc.

I can't format it on the other PC (spec above) because I can't get to the drive, it only comes up in the bios, can't get it at prompt

[Aedan]

Is the drive partitioned at all? This won't explain why XP decided there was no disk, but would explain why the BIOS could see it, but the OS couldn't.

Also, if you boot from a DOS disk, DOS cannot understand NTFS, hence you won't see a drive letter if the hard disk only contains NTFS partitions.

Áedán

[AtomicMatter]

That's it!! it IS NTFS formatted, so i have to format it by Fat32? how do i go about doing that then?

[Aedan]

Thing is, Windows XP setup recognises NTFS quite happily, even if DOS can't. Hence, if you boot from a Windows XP CD, it should see the hard disk!

Formatting it as FAT would require you to use a tool like FDISK to remove the NTFS partition, and create a FAT partition.

Áedán

[AtomicMatter]

the windows XP cd won't even boot. It is bootable cuz it boots on this pc, on my other pc however it goes

boot from cd:
boot from cd:
Then some crap about an Nvidia Boot manager, whatever that is, it doesn't work and asks me to insert system disk yada yada

[cloasters]

If I read this right, and you want this HDD to be the Primary Master in the box you want it in now, it should be jumpered as Master. Orthodox drive management in Windows machines dictates that the OS must be on the HDD that's on the Primary IDE channel as Master. Further, in Win9x boxes, Windows must be installed on the C:\ partition of the Primary Master hard drive.

[SteveI]

Are you using a USB keyboard?

[GaulHahn]

Since You have a Maxtor Drive try using Maxtor Maxblast 3 to setup partitions on your disk.

And also Powermax for more advanced diagnostics.

[cloasters]

Any progress with your recalcitrant machine, AtomicMatter?

[AtomicMatter]

forgot to tell you guys, I coverted my drive using my old machine with partition magic 8, which got me to boot from the cd (even though that's not what it was meant for, but oh well) and fix the master boot record (\FIXMBR) I could then install a fresh copy of windows XP pro nicely with my new slipstremed cd.

Cheers for the help guys, a couple of knowledable dudes on a forum and an extra pc really comes in handy!

[cloasters]

Yay, I'm glad that your machine is shipshape and Bristol fashion! A "B" box certainly does come in handy.