Rather than using BootMagic have a look at BootItNG
(http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/). One rather nice feature is that it can
be installed onto its own micro partition - basically the otherwise unused
part of the first cylinder. The advantage of this being that you aren't then
tied to having BootMagic installed on one of your system partitions.

Returning to your problem. In all honesty I don't know why you are seeing
this zero byte drive D: but the clue has to be that the Device Manager is
reporting just the single drive and assigning it as D: rather than the
expected C:. What happens if you boot into Safe Mode delete the hard drive
and all controllers and anything else connected to the controllers. On
rebooting back into Normal Mode where the devices will be redetected do you
still see the same drive letter assignments?
--
Mike Maltby MS-MVP



*Vanguard*
wrote:

Windows ME
Abit NF7-S v2 motherboard (built-in USB), nForce2 400 chipset
Drives:
IDE0 master = WD 120GB ATA-133 IDE hard disk
IDE1 master = CD-RW/DVD-ROM IDE combo drive

Problem:
The only drive designator that should get assigned is C: because it is
the FAT32 primary partition used to boot Windows ME. Other partitions
are formatted as NTFS. There should be no D: drive but it is showing up
(as zero bytes in size).

I have both Windows XP and Windows ME installed but in separate primary
partitions. My hard drive is partitioned as follows:

- 1st partition = primary
C: using NTFS for Windows XP system drive
Hidden to Windows ME (because of NTFS)
- 2nd partition = primary
C: using FAT32 for Windows ME
Hidden to Windows XP (no drive designator assigned)
- 3rd partition = extended with logical drive
D: using NTFS for Windows XP data drive
Hidden to Windows ME (because of NTFS)

The 2nd partition is seen by Windows XP but has *not* been assigned a
drive letter (it did originally but I used diskmgmt.msc to remove the
drive designator from it) since I do not want it accessed when booting
up using Windows XP. The Windows ME partition is used for playing games
that I just can't get running at all or running well under an NT-based
version of Windows.

I don't want to use the same partition for both installs and risk one OS
polluting the other (as with Microsoft's dual-boot within the same
partition), so I have them in separate primary partitions so Windows ME
cannot see the other drives (because they are NTFS formatted) and
Windows XP [user] cannot see the FAT32 partition for Windows ME because
no drive letter is assigned to it (i.e., it is hidden). I was going to
use BootMagic (included with PartitionMagic) but it reports that it
cannot find its home partition. It requires a non-NTFS partition to
install the rest of its bootstrap program so it is on the FAT32
partition with Windows ME. Windows ME boots just fine so I don't know
what is BootMagic's problem (and am still waiting for a response from
Symantec since they gobbled up Powerquest). If I can't get BootMagic to
work, I'll just edit boot.ini to use the dual-boot function of NTLDR
from Windows XP to make my OS selection.

The problem:

When I boot into Windows ME (by making its primary partition the active
one), it should NOT be able to see the first primary partition nor the
logical drive in the extended partition because both are formatted using
NTFS. This was how Windows ME first behaved when it was installed (I
had saved the MBR after the partitioning but before installing Windows
ME so I could recover the original bootstrap code in the MBR that
Windows ME would screw up, and then restored it after the Windows ME
install). At first, all I had for hard drives was C: which was the
FAT32 partition.

However, I kept getting "PCI Universal Serial Bus" device not found and
Windows ME wanted me to install a driver for it. After installing
Windows ME, I installed the nForce platform driver package (this
motherboard uses the nForce2 400 chipset). I thought it would include
USB support but found out it does not. So I downloaded the Orangeware
USB driver from Abit's web site, installed it (and then reinstalled the
nVidia nForce driver package just to be sure nVidia's latest version
drivers were getting used) and this nuisancesome "device found" dialog
disappeared on bootup of Windows ME. After this is when I got the
zero-byte D: drive showing up.

In Explorer, I see C: which is the FAT32 partition (second primary
partition) used to boot Windows ME. The CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive is assigned
J:. In Explorer, I also see a D: drive but it reports no properties and
is zero bytes in size. When I look in Device Manager, only one hard
drive is listed (which is correct since there is only one physical hard
disk) but under its properties it says it is being assigned a D: drive
designator (I would think it should say C. When I boot into Windows
ME, the FAT32 partition is getting assigned a C: designator.

So where is this D: designator getting assigned, and why is it getting
assigned? C: is obviously showing up because that's the boot partition
for Windows ME (which is loading okay) and shows up in Explorer. But D:
is the drive designator shown in Device Manager for the physical hard
disk and D: is showing up in Explorer but D: should not appear anywhere
when booting under Windows ME.

TIA