Any overlay software would, I think, be on the booting drive since that's where it loads from. If you just reformatted the drive the overlay software shouldn't be affected. Removing and recreating the partition with fdisk shouldn't affect it either. However an FDISK/MBR would probably remove it.

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That fdisk output tells us that only drive 1 has partitions accessable to DOS, hence no drive letters assigned to drives 2 & 3. We're left wondering where the partitions went. DAVE's theory about drive overlay makes semse. But why drive OL on a board that new? ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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what happens, if you remove all three disks, then connect the primary slave and secondary slave as primary master (one at a time), boot the machine with a win98 bootdisk, and then run "fdisk /status" ? (make sure you make the jumper settings correctly when you do this) my signature does not look like this

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Here’s a twist (with a lot more background). A detail omitted from previous posts is that the secondary master is a working Sony CDRW. This Win98 computer is part of a portable 19” rack-based DigiDesign Digi001 audio recording application. I have a job tonight so had to close the computer now that it is working adequately though without bulk storage. It will probably be several days before I can investigate further using your many helpful suggestions. Here are some more pieces of the puzzle to stew over. After re-installing Win98 I did install drivers from the mother board CD. The CD contains extensive software (most of which is probably intended for professional system integrators). I quickly shot-gunned the obvious selections but did not record my actions. Next, while trying to install the Digi001 application there was a driver/setup problem with multimedia audio devices. Thinking there might be a sound blaster conflict I uninstalled the mother board driver software (whatever that means). No noticeable change in performance resulted. Again I did not record my actions. Silly me. I tried for several evenings to reinstall the Digi001 software. The bottom line was this: In the process of formatting/re-installing Windows I never had physically removed the Digi001 board from the motherboard PCI slot. In order to establish a working Digi001, Win98 had to boot at least once without the Digi001 hardware installed. Plug and play is required for installation of the Digi001 software. Manual installation does not work. As a result of the above the present status of the motherboard drivers is unknown and yet uninvestigated. The race against the clock was to be able to record tonight. Last night I removed the primary slave from this Win98 PC and connected it to the kid’s Win XP Home e-machine. The primary slave drive works like a champ. I was able to copy a directory of ‘generic recording session’ files from this slave drive to a CD. From this CD the “generic” files transferred to the Win98 primary master. This allows me to record tonight without relearning full system setup. Pheww. After reinstalling the primary slave drive Win98 booted with only C: recognized by Explorer. No A: (floppy), no D: (logical partition on C: drive), no E: (CDRW). After restart these drives reappeared. I did not re-seat any cables/connectors. To prepare the rack for transport I closed up the Win98 computer in original configuration. The data recovery WD40 secondary slave is removed and the original bulk storage WD160 secondary slave reconnected. After restart Win98 Explorer reports these drives: A:, C: D: (primary master), No primary slave, E: (CDRW), F:, G: (secondary slave). So at this time the primary slave is the only drive not seen by Explorer. I hope it boots OK on the job tonight. No time to investigate further for a couple days. Thank you all for your help. I will carefully review and consider all of your suggestions this weekend. Results will be posted. Your support is appreciated more than you might know. Thanks again. -Fried

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Yeah an overlay probably wouldn't be needed but it's just something to check off the list. Be sure to look in device manager and performance. If there is a problem with the motherboard drivers it should show there.

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