Stuck again..hard drive

Well the problem is I have a hard drive (Maxtor) which when I make a
slave system does not see it. When I make it a master the best it will
do is bring up the Windows log and stay there for ever. If I wait long
enough and mash a lot of key I get three messages saying I am missing
files. But this does me no good because I cant format use FDISH. I
just cant get access to the drive. I have tried NORTON, MAXTOR drive
install, backup floppy, boot disk message I get back is wrong dos
version. I believe that one message I received from NORTON was that a
table defining characteristic of the hard drive was bad. Trying to use
FDISK /MBR but I just cant get access to the drive. Yes I have been
trying for hours and hours to fix this problem. No happy results!!.
Would it make any difference if I put the slave on the other controller
and make it a slave there,e.g., ATA controller has Master on one cable
and cd and slave drive on the other cable?. Yes I am just guessing. I
will post this on MPW setup, and AC hardware not sure about win 98
listing. I am really out of ideals.
Thanks in advance. WIN98SE.

"L" wrote in message
nk.net...

Well the problem is I have a hard drive (Maxtor) which when I make a
slave system does not see it. When I make it a master the best it will
do is bring up the Windows log and stay there for ever. If I wait long
enough and mash a lot of key I get three messages saying I am missing
files. But this does me no good because I cant format use FDISH. I
just cant get access to the drive. I have tried NORTON, MAXTOR drive
install, backup floppy, boot disk message I get back is wrong dos
version. I believe that one message I received from NORTON was that a
table defining characteristic of the hard drive was bad. Trying to use
FDISK /MBR but I just cant get access to the drive. Yes I have been
trying for hours and hours to fix this problem. No happy results!!.
Would it make any difference if I put the slave on the other controller
and make it a slave there,e.g., ATA controller has Master on one cable
and cd and slave drive on the other cable?. Yes I am just guessing. I
will post this on MPW setup, and AC hardware not sure about win 98
listing. I am really out of ideals. Thanks in advance. WIN98SE.

If you have had one error report that the drive is
bad, you may have wasted those hours and hours
trying to make it work. Simplest test:
1. Boot from a DOS installation floppy.
2. Run FDISK and post here how it describes
the Maxtor drive.
3. If FDISK reports this drive normally, FDISK
a single partition (large enough to be useful, say
2 Gb) and OK for Long File Names). Reboot and
A:FORMAT C:
A:SYS C:
Then remove the floppy and reboot. If the drive is
useable you ought to get a C prompt.

(We assume all three of these points.
a: your BIOS has been set to boot first from A:, secondly
from C:, thirdly from the CD;
b: your drive(s) are correctly jumpered and cabled;
c: the BIOS recognizes the Maxtor correctly.)

If you get a C prompt you can reboot from the DOS
installation floppy and instal Win98SE from the CD.

If not, buy another hard drive.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

After going through Don's tests, if they produce no joy, before going out
and buying a new HDD you should test the drive on the Secondary connector,
using the cable that is already there. Just pull the cable from the CD drive
and attach it to the HDD, set as Master, then run the tests again. Don't
make it slave to the CD drive. *IF* you get the same results, the drive is
almost certainly bad. If you get a different set of results but which still
indicate problems, then it *may* be that the cable to the CD drive is of a
type that doen't support hard drives (yes, there are such things.)

However, it certainly sounds like the drive is bad.

--

Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
http://grystmill.com/articles/cleanboot.htm
http://grystmill.com/articles/security.htm

"Don Phillipson" wrote in message
...
"L" wrote in message
nk.net...

Well the problem is I have a hard drive (Maxtor) which when I make a
slave system does not see it. When I make it a master the best it will
do is bring up the Windows log and stay there for ever. If I wait long
enough and mash a lot of key I get three messages saying I am missing
files. But this does me no good because I cant format use FDISH. I
just cant get access to the drive. I have tried NORTON, MAXTOR drive
install, backup floppy, boot disk message I get back is wrong dos
version. I believe that one message I received from NORTON was that a
table defining characteristic of the hard drive was bad. Trying to use
FDISK /MBR but I just cant get access to the drive. Yes I have been
trying for hours and hours to fix this problem. No happy results!!.
Would it make any difference if I put the slave on the other controller
and make it a slave there,e.g., ATA controller has Master on one cable
and cd and slave drive on the other cable?. Yes I am just guessing. I
will post this on MPW setup, and AC hardware not sure about win 98
listing. I am really out of ideals. Thanks in advance. WIN98SE.

If you have had one error report that the drive is
bad, you may have wasted those hours and hours
trying to make it work. Simplest test:
1. Boot from a DOS installation floppy.
2. Run FDISK and post here how it describes
the Maxtor drive.
3. If FDISK reports this drive normally, FDISK
a single partition (large enough to be useful, say
2 Gb) and OK for Long File Names). Reboot and
A:FORMAT C:
A:SYS C:
Then remove the floppy and reboot. If the drive is
useable you ought to get a C prompt.

(We assume all three of these points.
a: your BIOS has been set to boot first from A:, secondly
from C:, thirdly from the CD;
b: your drive(s) are correctly jumpered and cabled;
c: the BIOS recognizes the Maxtor correctly.)

If you get a C prompt you can reboot from the DOS
installation floppy and instal Win98SE from the CD.

If not, buy another hard drive.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Here are some tips about hard drives and/or CD/DVD drives:

(These tips are not in order of importance)

1. Make sure your BIOS supports the size of drive you are installing. One
time I tried to put a 100 gb drive in a computer with a motherboard that is
now about 7 yrs old and it wouldn't boot. I had to find an update for the
BIOS before I could get it to work.

2. Make sure that the BIOS has the IDE controllers you are using enabled.
If it has an "Auto-detect" for IDE devices, make sure that it is enabled or
use the Detect IDE to set the BIOS for your drives. If you make any changes
to the BIOS, make sure you save on exit. (You may need to do this step after
you have tried the steps below about Cable Select, Master/Slave and IDE
Cables.

3. If your motherboard has 2 IDE connectors, make sure you are using the
first connector for the hard drives or at least for the drive you have your
bootable partition on.

4. Make sure the drive with the bootable partition is the Master drive. (see
#8 and #9 below)

5. Make sure you have a FAT32 primary partition on the drive and that it is
the active partition. If you have more than 1 primary partition on a drive,
it is advisable that only one be a visable partition.

6. I'm not sure what the maximum size of a primary partition that Windows 98
can use but if you used a partition utility other than FDISK that comes with
98, it's possible the the partition is too large.

7. Also on a very large drive, there is a physical boundry on a drive that
Windows 98 cannot read/write past without some sort of partition translation
utility.

8. With 2 drives on the same IDE cable, make sure that either they are both
set to "Cable Select" (CS) or your first drive is set to "Master" (MA) (or
Master with Slave Present) and your second drive is set to "Slave" (SL or SA).

9. If you have both drives on the same cable set to Cable Select, the drive
connected at the end of the cable is usually the master or first drive and
the drive on the middle connector is the slave or second drive. Also make
sure that you DO NOT have your cable connected backwards with the end drive
connector (Master) connected to the motherboard's IDE connector and the drive
connected to cable's motherboard (usually blue) connector.

10. If the drives will not work with the cable select setting, try changing
the the master/slave settings. I have seen a few cables that even though
they are labeled Master and Slave, they won't work in that mode.

11. I have also seen some drives that appear not to be compatible with other
drives. If your motherboard has 2 IDE connectors and you have another IDE
cable, try connecting the second drive to the second connector.

If none of this works, post a message here and I can try to help you some
more with it.

"L" wrote:

Well the problem is I have a hard drive (Maxtor) which when I make a
slave system does not see it. When I make it a master the best it will
do is bring up the Windows log and stay there for ever. If I wait long
enough and mash a lot of key I get three messages saying I am missing
files. But this does me no good because I cant format use FDISH. I
just cant get access to the drive. I have tried NORTON, MAXTOR drive
install, backup floppy, boot disk message I get back is wrong dos
version. I believe that one message I received from NORTON was that a
table defining characteristic of the hard drive was bad. Trying to use
FDISK /MBR but I just cant get access to the drive. Yes I have been
trying for hours and hours to fix this problem. No happy results!!.
Would it make any difference if I put the slave on the other controller
and make it a slave there,e.g., ATA controller has Master on one cable
and cd and slave drive on the other cable?. Yes I am just guessing. I
will post this on MPW setup, and AC hardware not sure about win 98
listing. I am really out of ideals.
Thanks in advance. WIN98SE.