Hi All, I updated my comp from 98 to ME. The os loaded. The next day, it loaded to the acer logo. Checking the bios, it does not see the cd-rom, cd-rw and the 2nd hd. The bios is set to auto, I plugged and unplugged the cables, it also see the floppy. I am at a loss, (almost forgot the battery was on it's last leg, replaced it) as to why the comp does not see this hardware since none were added and were part of the system, I would appreciate your help and thank you in advance for any help you can give me, frank

Does it boot OK to windows? If so, go to CONTROL PANEL--SYSTEM--PERFORMANCE and see if the lost drives are in msdos compatibility mode. (I assume ME is like 98 and will show that.) Also check to see if they show in DEVICE MANAGER. It they don't show, recheck cmos. Make sure both IDE controllers are enabled and the drives are properly identified.

"almost forgot the battery was on it's last leg, replaced it" Did you go into the BIOS & correct all the settings? Detect IDE Devices? ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP2

Hello DAVEINCAPS and Jam, I cannot get past the acer screen, I set bios to auto hd or cd-rom, the floppy and C drive are shown, in the other slots, it reports, no device. ME is more stable than 98 and crashes fewer times, otherwise the os are compatible. Could the weak battery cause this, what is interesting, the date shown was about the time this computer was put together. I can get into DOS, but does not show the windows folder, I can move from A to C and back, since it cannot see the cd-rom, I can't reload the os. Again, I appreciate your help and input, a mystery I don't know how it took shape. The mystery of the invisible hardware, frank

You won't have access to the cdrom in dos unless dos drivers are loaded. You need to boot up with a bootdisk that has cdrom support. You should be able to download a file that will create a bootdisk at www.bootdisk.com. With a bootdisk you can run scandisk to check the drives. It sounds like your original c: drive may have crashed. Is it possible the bios isn't seeing that drive? Under those circumstances D: will become C: and that may be why windows isn't booting and why you don't see a windows directory. Anyway, get the bootdisk and use it. You can also run fdisk and choose option 5 to move between the two drives and then option 4 to view the partition info.

HI DAVEINCAPS, I have a boot disk, I ran scandisk and zipped through what showed as C drive, I select boot up with cd-rom support, It reports drive does not exist. Is there a way I can check to see if it is C or D that scandisk is checking. My cd-rw, cd-rom and an hd is not seen by the comp, all equipment was existing hardware with no addon. If C drive crashed I would not be able to see the DOS sector as it was not on my D drive at that time. I would hate to scrub C drive and have to reload all the program that are on the disk, I will save that until all else fails, thanks again Dave. frank

Assuming the bootdisk is loading generic dos cdrom drivers then either the IDE controller they're connected to is disabled in cmos or the cabling or jumpers aren't right. To determine which hard drive is being seen, you may need to open the case and disconnect one of the drives. The original C: should usually be jumpered Master on the primary IDE. So if that one's disconnected and the other drive is seen then it's probably bad. But check both drives separately. When doing so make sure they're jumpered as master.