HD Killed by SP2??

[Greg S]

I have a PC with relatively up-to-date HW (1 y.o.) and
WinXP Home. It has 2 hard drives on IDE channel 0; the
boot drive is the master.

When I installed SP2 and rebooted the PC, suddenly my
slave drive (a 40GB WD) disappeared: I can't access it
anymore. Restoring to an earlier state (pre-SP2) does not
fix the problem. Is it just a bad coincidence or has
anybody seen similar problems after installing SP2?

Greg

 

[Dick Kistler]

I have a PC with relatively up-to-date HW (1 y.o.) and
WinXP Home. It has 2 hard drives on IDE channel 0; the
boot drive is the master.

When I installed SP2 and rebooted the PC, suddenly my
slave drive (a 40GB WD) disappeared: I can't access it
anymore. Restoring to an earlier state (pre-SP2) does not
fix the problem. Is it just a bad coincidence or has
anybody seen similar problems after installing SP2?

Greg

Does Windows see your second HD? Is it in Device Manager?
If so, then the drive letter may be turned off. TweakUI can fix
this. Google it. Be sure to get the XP version.

Dick Kistler

 

[Rock]

I have a PC with relatively up-to-date HW (1 y.o.) and
WinXP Home. It has 2 hard drives on IDE channel 0; the
boot drive is the master.

When I installed SP2 and rebooted the PC, suddenly my
slave drive (a 40GB WD) disappeared: I can't access it
anymore. Restoring to an earlier state (pre-SP2) does not
fix the problem. Is it just a bad coincidence or has
anybody seen similar problems after installing SP2?

Greg

Is the drive detected by the Bios? If not it's a problem with the drive.

 

[Greg S]

-----Original Message-----


Is the drive detected by the Bios? If not it's a problem

with the drive.

The BIOS can't see it, so I guess it's the drive. I'll
mess around with it some more, after work. I'll plug it
in another PC.

Still, I look on SP2 with some suspicion. Yes,
coincidences do happen, but I didn't even switch off the
PC, just went along with the automatic reboot and bang!
Drive disappears.

Thanks for all the advice, though.

Greg

 

[Rock]

with the drive.

The BIOS can't see it, so I guess it's the drive. I'll
mess around with it some more, after work. I'll plug it
in another PC.

Still, I look on SP2 with some suspicion. Yes,
coincidences do happen, but I didn't even switch off the
PC, just went along with the automatic reboot and bang!
Drive disappears.

Thanks for all the advice, though.

Greg

Ok. Please post back with what you discover.

 

[Broomstick]

Have you tried changing the IDE cable with a known good one?
It could be bad IDE cable. At first I also thought it was the harddisk.

 

[Alex Nichol]

The BIOS can't see it, so I guess it's the drive. I'll
mess around with it some more, after work. I'll plug it
in another PC.

Still, I look on SP2 with some suspicion. Yes,
coincidences do happen, but I didn't even switch off the
PC, just went along with the automatic reboot and bang!
Drive disappears.

It may be that the BIOS needs to be told to do a new autodetect: But if
a device is not seen in BIOS then it will not be on the list reported
from it to XP for enumeration: That may have been staggering along
previously, but the SP2 forced a new enumeration, and Bingo it is not to
be found

 

[Greg S]

Ok. Please post back with what you discover.

Well, after a few reboots, I can see the HD again. I
reinstalled SP2 and everything is happy and dandy.

It's a bit of a mistery, but as it was suggested in some
of the other posts, it may be a hardware problem (HD,
cable, whatever). An intermittent one, as it stands.

I'll keep an eye on that drive. I'm not storing anything
vital or non-backed-up stuff on it, anyway.

My thanks to those who offered their advice.

Greg

 

[Broomstick]

I had a couple of experiences where a good hd ceased to function properly.
The first one was caused by defective ide cable.
The second involved loose cpu HSF screws and motherboard screws.

 

[Broomstick]

Sorry, I should add that the HD ran fine after the causes were fixed.

I had a couple of experiences where a good hd ceased to function properly.
The first one was caused by defective ide cable.
The second involved loose cpu HSF screws and motherboard screws.

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