Oh, and you say you can't access your cdrom drives (E: and F:) after booting from the bootdisk. The bootdisk is creating a ramdrive at e: and bumping up your cdrom drive letters to F: and G:. First of all, if the bootdisk didn't detect them, it would have given an error message when loading oakcdrom.sys and mscdex.exe. Watch the screen when the bootdisk is loading. It'll either show the cdrom drive letters or give an error message. If it's not seeing either one then check in cmos/bios setup and make sure both IDE controllers are enabled. Make sure their data cable is in good condition and tightly connected.

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What size and/or model numbers are your hard drives? 98 won't properly run on drives larger than about 127 gig. The 3.5 ghz machine you're using may have a drive larger than that.

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Hey DAVEINCAPS, Thanks for the replies (Response 6,7,8). It's 10.35 in the morning here in sunny South Africa, and after midnight for you in the States? Thanks for being available in the late, late hours :-) Responding to Response 6 & 8: Yes D:drive is a seperate drive. C:drive is a Western Digital WD100EB-00BHFO 10GB (master) drive D:drive is a Maxtor-2B02H1 20GB (slave) drive Could I not simply unplug the D:drive and set the jumpers on the C:drive to Single, and then reboot? Or should I rather do the setting in CMOS/BIOS as you suggested : DAVEINCAPS said "you CAN set its drive type to NONE in cmos/bios setup". Okay, responding to Response 7: If I am booting from the floppy, before the query screen comes up asking, '1. Start computer with CD-Rom support' etc., a primary BIOS screen comes up showing the Pri. Master and Pri. Slave (correctly reported) and Sec. Master and Sec. Slave correctly reporting the CD-Rom and CD-RW drives. I have checked the CMOS/BIOS settings and both IDE controllers are enabled and the drives are detected. However, when the boot floppy is loading, and the screen showing the loading process rolls past, it does not show any reference to CD-Rom drives at all. Query: Should I physically disable the D:drive by unplugging and resetting the jumpers, or should I virtually disable the D:drive in the CMOS/BIOS settings? Thanks for all the help and responses. This is truly appreciated! Michael. Shoot for the Heart

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Remove the power & data plugs from #2HDD D: You should not have to change the Jumper on C: as it's already set to Master (BIOS=Primary Master). To eliminate some confusion you could Eliminate the HDD D: and one of the Optical Drives. Just unplug Power & data cables. Unplug the one on the Middle plug on the Ribbon Cable. Your drive letters should now be, C: Primary Master HDD and D: CD/DVD Optical drive. You may see "Not Detected" in place of the unplugged drives. When you boot from a Floppy Boot Disk, The RAM Drive that is created will Bump your CDROM Drive Letter either UP one Letter (E), or to a drive letter determined by the Boot Disk. Sometimes it's "R" HP sometimes uses "M". The system uses the RAM DRIVE, there is nothing you can, or need to do with it. It just speeds up the Process by using Main Memory (RAM) rather than the slower HDD. Personally. I would not change anything in the BIOS. Bios will not detect unplugged Drives. Then you won't have to reenter BIOS later. I would put the CDROM as first in Boot order if you see the option, or at least make sure it is not after Boot from HDD. Try booting up from C: again. If it fails, reboot with a Boot Floppy and select boot Without CDROM support. At the A: type SYS C:, Hit Enter. You should see a message "Files Transfered". Remove the Floppy and Reboot. Note any error messages exactly. Post back. Now a couple of questions. You say you have an OEM Restore CD. What it the MFG and Model number of your Computer? I noticed you report your Processor speed as 3.5 Ghz, is this accurate? Or is that 350Mhz *NOTE For the Future* When running 2 HDD the Master should be on the Primary IDE Chanel, with the Slave HDD on Secondary IDE Channel, jumpereed either Master or slave. Leaving the Optical Drives split between Primary IDE & Secondary IDE. Slave, on Primary IDE, and Either Master or Slave, on Secondary IDE. I would put the CD/DVD Burner Drive on the Primary IDE, as Slave There is nothing to learn from someone who already agrees with you.

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Responding to Response 10: Thanks Dumbob for the in-depth response. I am going to work through your suggestions and I will post back the outcome/s. Hold thumbs... Michael Shoot for the Heart

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Reply to Dumbob... I checked the BIOS and the CPU CLOCK/SPEED is 200MHz/3.20GHz Shoot for the Heart

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Reply to Dumbob Response 10: Thank you all! :-) I followed the instructions, removed the power and data cables, and booted from C:drive. Bliss. It started up fine, went all the way through to Windows and my data is there and intact. Thank you. In answer to the questions: Dumbob asked: "Now a couple of questions. You say you have an OEM Restore CD. What it the MFG and Model number of your Computer?" I have an OEM Win98SE CD. On reflection, this might not have been supplied with this computer, but a prior one I had, a refurbished P111 which was struck by lightning. It was rebuilt by a computer engineering company here in South Africa with a new case and an EPOX 4PGM21 Motherboard with a 3,20 GHz CPU and a 10GB HDD. No make and model for this, I'm afraid. They transferred the 20 GB HDD from the old computer, (maybe with some legacy lightning problems, methinks...) and used the Win98SE from there as well. Hope this answers your question. My question follows: How do I go about accessing the information on the (now unattached) D:drive? There is stuff on there that I need. Thanks for your patience everyone, and your invaluable help. You've all blessed me. PtL. Michael. Shoot for the Heart

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Did you change the jumpers on the C: drive prior to getting it to work by itself? If the drives were jumpered as 'cable select' then it wouldn't matter. But if they were jumpered as master and slave you would have needed to remove the WD master jumper when you removed the maxtor from the cable. (A WD drive by itself on the cable has a 'no jumper' master setting.) If you didn't remove the jumper then the PC would hang on the drive detection screen--which is what you said happened the first time you disconnected the maxtor. But it works now so maybe that's a moot point. To access the D: drive you can try connecting it on the secondary and see if you can access it. But likely you'll get the same problem. You may need to go to maxtor's site and download some diagnostic software. Also, I don't know that I would split the hard drives between the primary and secondary controllers on a permanent basis. The primary on many motherboards has a faster transfer rate than the secondary. The primary on yours is probably ATA 100 or 133. The secondary may be just ATA 33. To find out for sure you need to check the motherboard specs.

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Reply to Response 14: to DAVEINCAPS No I didn't change the jumpers on the C:drive prior to getting it to work by itself. But it worked, nonetheless. What I did do was to try the Maxtor (the dodgy D:drive) on its own. I unplugged the WD and plugged in the Maxtor. I jumpered it to single drive status. The system still would not see it, even after I had tried booting from a boot-disk I made once the C:drive was running, and I could access Windows. Current sitaution: I have unplugged the Maxtor and the WD is working well on its own. I will continue to try to get the Maxtor working. I will look on the Maxtor website for some diagnostic software. Thanks for that tip. Any other advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks again. Michael. Shoot for the Heart

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"Win 98 can restore the registry from the command line (as long as system restore is not disabled)" Windows 98 don't even have system restore. Jesus Loves You! Keyboard not detected. Hit F1 to Continue. BREAKFAST.SYS HALTED Cerial port not Responding!!

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