"The disk is not formatted ..."

[-RS-]

I put a fresh install of Win2K SP4 onto my main desktop machine on Friday.
Everything seemed to go OK. I installed some more software (Office2K, etc.)
on Saturday. All removeable media drives worked fine.

But on Monday, it cannot read from any of the removable drives: DVD-ROM;
CD/DVD burner; floppy drive. Whatever disk I put into those drives, it
says "The disk is not formatted" ... and do I want to format it.

Thanks for any tips in clearing this up !

- Intel D845PEBT2 motherboard

***************
-RS-

 

[Dave Patrick]

Sounds like bad hardware.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
|I put a fresh install of Win2K SP4 onto my main desktop machine on Friday.
| Everything seemed to go OK. I installed some more software (Office2K,
etc.)
| on Saturday. All removeable media drives worked fine.
|
| But on Monday, it cannot read from any of the removable drives: DVD-ROM;
| CD/DVD burner; floppy drive. Whatever disk I put into those drives, it
| says "The disk is not formatted" ... and do I want to format it.
|
| Thanks for any tips in clearing this up !
|
| - Intel D845PEBT2 motherboard
|
| ***************
| -RS-
|
|

 

[Guest]

Check the newsgroup about 10 topics below called "Drive not accessible"
It says try using disk management in your admin tools to fix the problem

 

[-RS-]

Thanks, I did go to diskmgmt, as suggested. However, both hard drives C and
E have their drive letters ... as do the 2 optical drives and the zip drive.

Any other thing I should do there?

-RS-

 

[Guest]

I dont know, are they initiated or activated in disk mngmnt?

You defintely have a strange problem...windows can see the devices but not
talk to them...wtf is that about, have you tried playing with your BIOS? I
will look into this more.

 

[-RS-]

I don't know ... can CD / DVD drives be "activated" ? Or initiated? They
just take removable media, right? I don't seen any option in Disk Management
to activate them. Am I overlooking that?

One thing more to add to the mix: I was talking to my vendor about the
problem. We bought this system with the Intel D845PEBT2 motherboard in late
2003. It was an upgrade from a Win2K Asus VP6 Dual P3 system, so I put the
OS (Win2K) on the new/upgraded system myself. I can't remember if I had
enabled Hyperthreading before ... in the first install of Win2K. Possibly
not. Anyway, I did so this time ... went into the BIOS prior to installing
Win2K ... thinking that Win2K SP4 must support Hyperthreading. The vendor
informed me that Intel was specific in telling them that it does NOT ... and
that therefore I had an "improper" installation of Win2K. I did go into the
BIOS this morning and disabled Hyperthreading. This has not really changed
the situation, however. It seems unlikely that the install of Windows would
be bad because of this ... or does it?

In any event several reboots must have been done over the weekend as I added
(plugged in) the various drives (I had kept the install 'simple' and only
had the HDD and the DVD-ROM and FDD hooked-up during the install of Win2K.)
as I installed Office and other programs. During this time the system had no
problem seeing the various CD/DVD drives. So why did it have trouble since
Monday ??

-RS-