Hi,

My computer nearly froze up yesterday. The system resources were overwhelmed and when I attempted to access the task manager (to identify the culprit) it said it had been disabled by the administrator. Nervous about what the pc was doing at the time I shut it down. When I restarted I edited the registry (disabletaskmanager was set to 1, changed to 0 to gain access), and nothing was currently running that shouldn't have been. Then I updated my antivurs software and ran a scan. It was at this time I realized that under 'my computer' my slave/secondary drive was no longer present. Pc-Cillin identified a couple different viruses. java_bytever.a, troj.alchemica.a, etc. and quarantined some of the appropriate files. It couldn't fix a few, so before truning off system restore and scanning with panda (which reported having fixes for the remaining files), I attempted a system restore to gain access to my secondary (D:) drive. No luck. So, I followed the necessary steps to rid myself of the other virus files successfully. Those files were exploit/byteverify, exploit/codebase.a, trj/briss.a . I realized after a reboot that my bios was not properly identifying my hard drives. It was auto-identifying (took longer than normal) and only located the primary master, not the slave. So this is where my understanding runs thin. I don't know enough about boot records and bios setting to know how to correct this problem. I have some valuable files on my D: drive and would like not to lose them. If anyone who has information or advice on how to re-enable that drive I would be grateful. Also, I just noticed that about 6gb of space has mysteriously disappeared from my C: drive as well. Thank you for your responses.

xp pro w/sp1, k7s5a, 60gb maxtor, 20 gb seagate,

gumbydancin,

"I realized after a reboot that my bios was not properly identifying my hard drives. It was auto-identifying (took longer than normal) and only located the primary master, not the slave."

That, would point to a hardware problem(cable, either power or data. Damaged and/or not properly connected. Does your HDD (hard disk drive) LED (light emitting diode {SIC} but you get the idea) stay lighted up, when the computer is on. By that, I mean, does it stay on all the time. Even slightly glowing, when the the computer is idle. Or, something you don't want to hear, is the HDD, might of gave out {failed}. Also, I'm assuming, both HDD's are on the same cable. Controller {motherboard}...nah, won't go there, quite yet ;-)

Check your connections, to your HDD, motherboard connection to HDD, and power supply to HDD. If all are good, might try a different data cable. Also, a different power supply connection. (if there isn't an extra one, swap them, between the two HDD's. M to S, S to M With the computer OFF, and power supply powered down)

p.s. If the BIOS, is set to AUTO, for the HDD's, that's an ok setting.

Good Luck,
I'll Try