problem with xp and large drive

[seth]

i have a strange problem with xp and my additional drive i recently bought.

i was running vista for a while and just couldn't deal with it anymore so
decided to go back to xp.

i have the original 250gb drive and added a 1tb drive. when i installed xp
it saw the 1tb drive as D and worked fine. i started to install my drivers,
first with the latest nvidia drivers for my video. it installed fine, but
after the reboot i nearly freaked out when D was gone. it didn't see the
drive at all. subsequent reboots did not show the drive in device manager
at all. i started over again with fresh xp install and after it finished D
was there again. i installed sp3 and after the reboot, D was again gone. i
installed xp a third time and D was there. this time i did nothing except a
reboot and again D was gone.

one thing that's interesting, every time the system would boot after the
initial install finished and D wouldn't appear, the boot process took
excessively long (nearly 5 min). i can't make sense of it. if it was a
matter of xp never seeing the drive, i can see the possibility of a driver
isse, 48 bit lba support etc. but when the drive can't be seen after the
second boot following initial install, that doesn't make too much sense to
me (bios always sees the drive).

i ended up going back to vista (for now) and no issues accessing the 1tb
drive.
system is hp pavilion a1630n purchased end of 2006.

any ideas why this could be happening?

 

[Lem]

i have a strange problem with xp and my additional drive i recently bought.

i was running vista for a while and just couldn't deal with it anymore
so decided to go back to xp.

i have the original 250gb drive and added a 1tb drive. when i installed
xp it saw the 1tb drive as D and worked fine. i started to install my
drivers, first with the latest nvidia drivers for my video. it
installed fine, but after the reboot i nearly freaked out when D was
gone. it didn't see the drive at all. subsequent reboots did not show
the drive in device manager at all. i started over again with fresh xp
install and after it finished D was there again. i installed sp3 and
after the reboot, D was again gone. i installed xp a third time and D
was there. this time i did nothing except a reboot and again D was gone.

one thing that's interesting, every time the system would boot after the
initial install finished and D wouldn't appear, the boot process took
excessively long (nearly 5 min). i can't make sense of it. if it was a
matter of xp never seeing the drive, i can see the possibility of a
driver isse, 48 bit lba support etc. but when the drive can't be seen
after the second boot following initial install, that doesn't make too
much sense to me (bios always sees the drive).

i ended up going back to vista (for now) and no issues accessing the 1tb
drive.
system is hp pavilion a1630n purchased end of 2006.

any ideas why this could be happening?

Just a guess (I don't use Vista), but perhaps this KB article has a
clue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931760/en-us

"Windows Vista and Windows PE 2.0 create disk partitions differently
than Windows XP. This problem occurs only on computers that use certain
BIOS firmware."

I haven't heard of an incompatibility between XP and disks partitioned
using Vista, but maybe there's something about very large drives ...

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm

 

[neil]

Did you use disk management to see if the drive was visible.
Neil

 

[seth]

yes and it isn't there
neither does the drive show in device manager

 

[DL]

What sp level was your installion winxp cd?
Have you checked your mobo manufacturer re bios updates?
Is the drive correctly shown in the bios?

 

[seth]

the install was a slipstream of sp2
there are no new bios updates since last year
and the drive is in the bios; works fine in vista

 

[seth]

i just reinstalled xp and used setup to create new partition on both drives
the 1tb drive worked....until the second reboot after installation
right now the drive is gone