Can't Access Drive

[DragonSoft]

OK this may not mean anything to anybody, but it means something to me. I have a computer with a Pentium 150 Mhz Processor (Oh, yeah, woop de doo), 32 Meg Ram, AND two 540 MB Hardrives attached, one accessible as C and the other accessible as D. Well I could access both drives when I got it but I just tried to install a CD-ROM Drive and now it won't let me access my second HD as Drive D(CD-ROM didn't work either but I'm not worried about that yet). So I removed the CD-ROM Drive and tried to reset the physical settings but it still won't let me access my second HD(I may not have set it up correctly). I need to know how to connect my HD's and how to set up BIOS to allow access to one as Drive C and one as Drive D. I have two IDE Channels, each with a ribbon attached. Do I need to have one drive attached at the end of the ribbon in channel 1 and the other at the end of the ribbon in channel 2? PLEASE HELP!

[This message has been edited by DragonSoft (edited 08-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by DragonSoft (edited 08-20-2001).]

[SPEEDO]

Welcome to sysopt.

Which os are you using 95, 98 ?


Are you using tweakui?

SPEEDO

[Imperion1]

Boot into Safe Mode. Check you cdrom and hard drive devices in Device Manager.

From Device Manager
Remove all hard drives but your primary C:
Remove all cd-rom drives showing.

Have your drives connected as DanaH69685 has suggested.

Reboot your computer. Check Device Manager for errors. You'll see a yellow !, if there are any driver conflicts.

[Fingers]

OS version???

See above suggestions, then check that there is not a line in the autoexec.bat or config.sys (cant remember which) that says Lastdrive D...if there is, either delete it, or change it to Lastdrive Z

[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 08-20-2001).]

[DanaH69685]

Dragon:

You did not say anything about resetting the bios. Here's the steps you should take:

1. Put both hard drives on the primary ide channel. Set the drive which will be C as the master and set the other as slave.

2. Put the CD-ROM as the master on the second ide channel.

3. Reboot the computer. Press delete or F1 or whatever you do to access the bios. Either at the initial setup screen or an ide screen you should have the opportunity to auto-detect the drives. Do so. All the hard drives should appear and the cd-rom may or may not depending on the age of the bios.

4. Reboot. Assuming both drive were previously partitioned and formatted, they should appear in Windoze.

Hope this helps ... If messing with the bios is beyond what you feel comfortable doing, take it to someone who has done this before.

[DragonSoft]

I tried that and AutoDetect will read both drives but I can't access the second drive from DOS or WINDOWS. Also when i start my computer the CD-ROM drive light blinks. BIOS will then detect my CD-ROM but I can't access it from DOS or WINDOWS and booting from the CD-ROM fails.

[DragonSoft]

Thanks for all your help, I got it fixed.