I've had some problems with windows (XP) so I decided to just reformat and start over, but now when I try to do this it can't find my drive at the dos prompt?? This happens whether I'm using the XP start up disk set or a win 98 or ME start up disk. With the XP discs it says can't find ddrive or partition. With the 98 or me disk once I get to the a: prompt and try to switch, it either says invalid drive or it has made C: the virtual disk?? Any thoughts? Thanks, Nick

Hi there, My first thought was that it doesn't like the NTFS drive, but if the XP boot disk doesn't even like it then perhaps something is wrong. How did you go about formatting it? -Adam

with the 98 startup disk fdisk and delete partition and create new partition then reboot see what happens after that

The obvious would be that you have a problem with your hard drive. Does it detect in the BIOS? Does it showup as anything in FDISK? If not, I would say start looking for a replacement. Of course, it could just be a bad IDE cable (if it's IDE that is) or a bad controller on the Motherboard. Aww, the joys of computers.

Thanks for the responses. I originally formatted it as NTFS. I swapped out the drive with another and get the same response. It is recognized in the bios and shows the drive type,size, manufacturer during the boot up attempt, but then it's gone?? I can't run fdisk because it does not show a drive or partition existing. I did run a program from Seagate to check the hard drive. You boot with it like a start up disk. Now it identifies the hard drive and scans it showing no problems, but even with this, once the program is done and I exit to the dos promtp, it can't find it. This program also uses c: as the virtual drive for running just like the start up disk?? I tried dir for every letter in the alphabet, but nothing. Since this program could perform a surface scan on the disk, would this rule out a bad IDE cable or Motherboard controller? I was beginning to think it was something like that.

go here: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html and download DiscWizard. Use the DiscWizard Starter Edition that comes with it to reinstall your hard drive. This will allow you to fastformat the drive, and it can prepare a FAT32 partition for you. I doubt your problems are as serious as bad hardware --- although if this doesnt work, they very well could be. You say "I swapped out the drive with another and get the same response" -- please explain -- what response do you get when you completely switch drives? DOS wont detect the drive? What is the status of the drive you swapped in (completely clean, formatted partitions, etc.)? Good luck.

There might be something physically wrong with the drive or it might be a partitioning problem. To eliminate partitioning I would download WIPE.exe from the IBM.COM site and wipe the drive. Then I would repartition it. Whether I could access it now would determine whether it was the drive itself or not. (You have made sure the cable is on tight and that it is a good cable already?)