Driver Gone Bad

[Krusty]

Okay, do they use a 2-inch thick cable (IDE) or do they use a 1/4-inch cable with a L-shaped connector (SATA)?

Power is only half of it. It has to be properly plugged into a cable, and that differs depending on the drive type.

[Raptor]

both use IDE. Both are dell computers; one a 4550 demension and the other a 3000

[Krusty]

Okay the jumpers on the back of the drive need to be changed so that the "screwy" drive is the "slave" and the one already in your other PC stays the "master".

There should be a pin diagram and a positionable jumper. Move that jumper to cover the proper pins for the "slave" option, and plug it into the middle plug on the IDE cable going from your other PC to your other PC's HD (normally each cable holds 2 drives, and normally only the one on the very end is used in single-HD setups).

Then plug power in, then go into BIOS and make sure the proper drive will boot, then start 'er up

[Raptor]

I plugged the screwy drive to the IDE cable on this comp and booted the computer, it did not seem to recognize the bad HD though so I couldn't scan it. I probably connected it wrong though.

[Krusty]

Well you need the screwy drive as the slave and the good drive as the master. If you're not sure, and you have an extra cable (take the cable from the other PC?) you can plug the screwy drive into the "Sec IDE" (your first HD should already be in "Pri IDE". That way you don't have to mess with slave/master and jumper pins.

[Raptor]

ok I've got it working on this computer now. I am going to update the anti-virus programs and scan it.

[Krusty]

Rap and I traded a few PMs.

Fellas, Raptor's got a problem: the HD is in and recognized, but in Windows it says "this drive is not formatted". Both drives are NTFS. Now this is the area where I usually muddle through things trial-and-error, so I suggested he get some other opinions.

My thought would be that the BIOS had not properly set up the drive. I would go into the BIOS and tell it to auto-detect the type of drive (where it says cylinders and heads and all that stuff). Leave your working drive as-is but tell it to auto-detect the second one again. This should happen while still in the BIOS. Then exit saving changes and reboot.

If that doesn't work I'm not sure what to suggest off the top of my head.

P.S. the reason your virus scan was so fast was because it couldn't read the files to scan them.

[TequilaChaser]

Originally posted by Krusty


My thought would be that the BIOS had not properly set up the drive. I would go into the BIOS and tell it to auto-detect the type of drive (where it says cylinders and heads and all that stuff). Leave your working drive as-is but tell it to auto-detect the second one again. This should happen while still in the BIOS. Then exit saving changes and reboot.

 

sounds about right, after it auto detects, he would automatically know before he exited the Bios......it would pop up how many sectors/heads etc in that slot/section  on detected devices on the BIOS screen....

try this 1st as Krusty suggested, detecting it as a secondary/slave IDE drive, if no go do the following:


..I would do this  byitself in the working computer TOO....because he does not know if it is the other comp that is causing the problem or not..to also make things safer unplug the good working HD......once he gets the non-recognizable HD to work, reload or repair the WinXP OS only, since it is showing( or is it) as NTFS file structure......hopefully he did not mess up when reloading the OS on the other pc and tryed to reformat accidently....

others thoughts?

I repeat unplug the KNOWN WORKING HD so it does not get messed up, and all ya have to do is pop it back in after you have troubleshooted/fixed the messed up HD.......

btw...I hate IDE ribbon cables, they can become easily pinched ( broken  enternally, and cause you all kinds of headaches....

[Raptor]

So far these are the errors I have recieved on the HD:
missing/corrupt isapnp.sys
unknown hard error ntdll.dll
No NICs installed on this drive

[pistol]

Go to microsoft crash analysis and download memory checker.
My friend had similar problems I could not figure out what was wrong then ran memory test, Bammo fornd i stick of 512 failed test.
Replaced and no more problems

[SkyChimp03]

Originally posted by Raptor
The link Krusty posted sounds like it should resolve the issue, but also it is going blue screen halfway through windows installation.

Blue screen o' death is memory error:aok For hard drive sounds like a virus.... Write 0's to hard drive and go from there:aok