I reported here recently that my daughter's PC had developed a "system file
missing or corrupt" error and would not boot. To provide her with a
temporary operating environment, I installed WinXP Pro on a separate 15GB
master drive with the 160GB defective system as a slave drive. The slave
drive hierarchy was fully visible in Windows Explorer and I was planning to
attempt a restore operation when time allowed. However, that drive has now
mysteriously become inaccessible. In Disk Management, it appears to have
three partitions, two of which are 8GB each but they do not have drive
letters. I presume those partitions are just for OEM purposes. However, the
main partition of 144GB says that it is fully available although, in
Properties, it is totally blue suggesting that it is full. I'm confused.
From my point of view, there are only two explanations for this. The first
is that there is a young man in the house who likes to think he knows about
computers but swears he has not touched this one. The second is virus
activity.
This is a Maxtor drive and it still tests OK with the PowerMax utility.
My feeling is that there is little hope of recovering the data off that
drive but that it may be worth a low level format and a new Windows
installation (original was Win Home OEM). This is not a popular idea in the
family.
What would you do?

brianf

"BrianF" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I reported here recently that my daughter's PC had developed a "system file
>missing or corrupt" error and would not boot. To provide her with a
>temporary operating environment, I installed WinXP Pro on a separate 15GB
>master drive with the 160GB defective system as a slave drive. The slave
>drive hierarchy was fully visible in Windows Explorer and I was planning to
>attempt a restore operation when time allowed. However, that drive has now
>mysteriously become inaccessible. In Disk Management, it appears to have
>three partitions, two of which are 8GB each but they do not have drive
>letters. I presume those partitions are just for OEM purposes. However, the
>main partition of 144GB says that it is fully available although, in
>Properties, it is totally blue suggesting that it is full. I'm confused.
>From my point of view, there are only two explanations for this. The first
>is that there is a young man in the house who likes to think he knows about
>computers but swears he has not touched this one. The second is virus
>activity.
>This is a Maxtor drive and it still tests OK with the PowerMax utility.
>My feeling is that there is little hope of recovering the data off that
>drive but that it may be worth a low level format and a new Windows
>installation (original was Win Home OEM). This is not a popular idea in the
>family.
>What would you do?


Sometimes there are problems when two hard drives are connected as
master and slave on the same IDE channel. This is most likely to
occur when the two drives are from different manufacturers and there
is also several years difference in the manufacturing dates of the two
drives.

Try reconfiguring the computer so that the problem drive is the master
drive on the secondary IDE channel and see if that makes any
difference. If possible leave any CD/DVD drives disconnected while
you try this.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

"Ron Martell" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> "BrianF" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> Sometimes there are problems when two hard drives are connected as
> master and slave on the same IDE channel. This is most likely to
> occur when the two drives are from different manufacturers and there
> is also several years difference in the manufacturing dates of the two
> drives.
>
> Try reconfiguring the computer so that the problem drive is the master
> drive on the secondary IDE channel and see if that makes any
> difference. If possible leave any CD/DVD drives disconnected while
> you try this.
>
I did return it to single drive status in order to run Recovery Console but
the drive remains inaccessible.
Also tried a DOS floppy but the HD was not visible.
I just wondered is such a situation could have been the result of a virus
attack.

brianf