Hello all,
I have a bizarre problem which I can not solve - I am hoping that someone here has some idea about what's happened to me.
I recently installed a wireless broadband network in my mothers house and connected her PC to it. The specs are:
P4 1.5 with 512mb RAM
XP Pro
Primary disc - Western Digital 20gb
Secondary disc (slave) Western Digital 80gb
This machine is a couple of years old and has had no previous relationship with the internet so once the firewall was up and running and the anti-virus scan was finished I allowed the machine to DL all the required windows updates.
After installing SP2 and rebooting, the second hard disk (disk F) has vanished from XP. It's not in the Hardware Manager, it's not visible in the Disk Manager, it's just not there anymore. All the shortcuts to programs on it are still on the desktop although they have reverted to the default icon.
The disk is still visible in BIOS and the startup screen says it's attached and working ok. You can access it via BIOS and change things like the SMART settings (enabled) but once you boot XP it's no longer available or indeed even recognised as existing.
I have tried removing the disk and putting it in another machine under the same circumstances (i.e. as a slave to another master disk) and it works fine.
This disk contains all of mothers work files and is immensely valuable to her. I've copied the contents off it by installing it in another machine but the problem persists. I'm sure buying a new HD would solve the problem but I am curious to know what the hell has happened here and whether there is something obvious I have missed.
Any help would be very greatly appreciated.
I have a bizarre problem which I can not solve - I am hoping that someone here has some idea about what's happened to me.
I recently installed a wireless broadband network in my mothers house and connected her PC to it. The specs are:
P4 1.5 with 512mb RAM
XP Pro
Primary disc - Western Digital 20gb
Secondary disc (slave) Western Digital 80gb
This machine is a couple of years old and has had no previous relationship with the internet so once the firewall was up and running and the anti-virus scan was finished I allowed the machine to DL all the required windows updates.
After installing SP2 and rebooting, the second hard disk (disk F) has vanished from XP. It's not in the Hardware Manager, it's not visible in the Disk Manager, it's just not there anymore. All the shortcuts to programs on it are still on the desktop although they have reverted to the default icon.
The disk is still visible in BIOS and the startup screen says it's attached and working ok. You can access it via BIOS and change things like the SMART settings (enabled) but once you boot XP it's no longer available or indeed even recognised as existing.
I have tried removing the disk and putting it in another machine under the same circumstances (i.e. as a slave to another master disk) and it works fine.
This disk contains all of mothers work files and is immensely valuable to her. I've copied the contents off it by installing it in another machine but the problem persists. I'm sure buying a new HD would solve the problem but I am curious to know what the hell has happened here and whether there is something obvious I have missed.
Any help would be very greatly appreciated.