Second hard drive not recognized on start up in XP

PC Hobbyist

PC Hobbyist

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Just a few days ago "out of nowhere", my second harddrive is not recognized when windows xp starts. If I reboot and go into the BIOS, both of my harddrives show up. Sometimes after rebooting, windows recognizes them both and sometimes the problem persists. I don't see any kind of a pattern. Also, I have Vista installed and it does recognize both harddrives always - so I assume it's an issue with xp.

Any help? As of right now "half of my computer" is missing and I need to work on files that are there.
:confused:

I have XP Pro SP2 on an HP Pavillion Pentium 4 and by the way, I updated my BIOS yesterday - still no change.
 
When windows doesn't recognize the drive go into disk management and take a look in there and see if it just needs a drive letter assigned to it or whats going on with it.
 
With Vista installed on the second drive XP not seeing it would be expected. It would like trying to read an XP while running an older version of Windows which is precisely why you are seeing this. When running Vista(RC1 or RC2?) beta you can clearly see the older XP drive but not vice versa. The bios will see drives regardless of OS on them.
 
PC eye said:
With Vista installed on the second drive XP not seeing it would be expected. It would like trying to read an XP while running an older version of Windows which is precisely why you are seeing this. When running Vista(RC1 or RC2?) beta you can clearly see the older XP drive but not vice versa. The bios will see drives regardless of OS on them.
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XP will see a Vista parition, there both NTFS, I have XP and Vista on 2 machines and both can see both, one machine has XP on 1 drive and Vista on the other, the other machine has them on 1 drive on different partition and XP can see both!
 
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StrangleHold said:
XP will see a Vista parition, there both NTFS, I have XP and Vista on 2 machines and both can see both, one machine has XP on 1 drive and Vista on the other, the other machine has them on 1 drive on different partition and XP can see both!
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Don't kid yourself that quickly. If Vista wasn't setup to dual OS with XP the installation on a second drive has to detected and installed later by XP in order to be seen. When installed as the second OS an entry is already made into the XP mbr. But if you have the XP drive disconnected when the beta of Vista goes on a second drive that's where XP can get lost at times. That can even happen between two drives with XP Home on one and the Pro edition on a second. Both are on NTFS partitions there. If the boot info goes missing... :confused:
 
he said the problem came ''out of nowhere'' which sounds to me like everything was fine (with both os's installed) one day, and then messed up for apparently no reason.

are your drives ide or sata?

you can try the obvious if you haven't already. check the cable connections, check your bios settings, try disk management, check the drive in another computer, etc.
 
Even when you simple have a second drive with no OS but used for storage XP can lose sight of it at times. You find that more common when someone reinstalls Windows after a reformat and can't see a second drive then. You could run the "sfc scannow" command at the Run prompt for a few minutes there to see if any system files need to be repaired. That will start the system file checker utilty. Windows glitches are more common on preinstalled systems when you start adding drives and second OSs.
 
PC eye said:
Don't kid yourself that quickly. If Vista wasn't setup to dual OS with XP the installation on a second drive has to detected and installed later by XP in order to be seen. When installed as the second OS an entry is already made into the XP mbr. But if you have the XP drive disconnected when the beta of Vista goes on a second drive that's where XP can get lost at times. That can even happen between two drives with XP Home on one and the Pro edition on a second. Both are on NTFS partitions there. If the boot info goes missing... :confused:
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Show me where he said any of that!

Just a few days ago "out of nowhere", my second harddrive is not recognized when windows xp starts.
 
StrangleHold said:
Show me where he said any of that!

Just a few days ago "out of nowhere", my second harddrive is not recognized when windows xp starts.
Click to expand...

That's called a Windows glitch. You can see XP lose track of a second drive as well as any other OS. That's part of the hardware detection process and XP's snapshot that was effected there somehow. The disk management tool was one idea to see if it was seen there. Having dual OSed often here a sys file occasionally gets knocked out of kilter once in awhile. At other times it suddenly reappears. When it isn't seen a system restart then detecting it would confirm that.
 
Thanks for all the input. I'll give you guys more details to perhaps help clarify any confusions.

My copy of XP Pro SP2 is a retail copy (legal and activated) from which I did a clean install two years ago.

About 6 months ago, I installed Vista as dual boot. When ever I reboot, I have the "black screen" with option to start Vista or an "earlier version of windows". I have xp as the default OS to boot to.

I have the following harddrives (as seen from XP):
Nr. 1: 120 GB
Partitions C: Win XP D: My Docs G: Storage

Nr. 2: 80 GB
Partitions E: Visat RC1 F: Storage J: Storage

Both XP and Vista have always recognized all of my six partitions.

 Prior to last week, I had never had any problems with XP not recognizing drives. The problem did start "out of nowhere" (in other words, there was nothing I did at all to the computer - in terms of installing anything or playing around with any settings.)


Yesterday, I could not get XP to recognize that second haddrive at all. I also tried booting in Safe Mode but the problem was still there. This morning out of the blue it recognized it upon booting.

Right now Disk Management shows everything ok (of course, I mean right now I see that second harddrive). I need to work on some files on that harddrive, so I don't want to run the risk of rebooting right now and not seeing them again. However, later on tonight I will reboot and if the HD is not recognized then I'll take a look at what Disk Management says and I'll let you guys know.

@ PC eye: If I run "sfc scannow" and errors are found, will they automatically be fixed or is there something I need to do?

Thanks everyone for all your responses. I'll keep checking back here.

Also, I was planning on writing another thread about my "system restore" problem, but I'll mention it here in case that plays a role somehow.
I recently noticed that any attempt to do a system restore fails. After reboot, I get the error that it failed and that no changes were made to the computer. This happens with the automatic "system checkpoints" that my computer does (don't really know what that is) and also with restore points I have created.
 
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PC Hobbyist said:
About 6 months ago, I installed Vista as dual boot. When ever I reboot, I have the "black screen" with option to start Vista or an "earlier version of windows". I have xp as the default OS to boot to.

I have the following harddrives (as seen from XP):
Nr. 1: 120 GB
Partitions C: Win XP D: My Docs G: Storage

Nr. 2: 80 GB
Partitions E: Visat RC1 F: Storage J: Storage

Both XP and Vista have always recognized all of my six partitions.

Prior to last week, I had never had any problems with XP not recognizing drives. The problem did start "out of nowhere" (in other words, there was nothing I did at all to the computer - in terms of installing anything or playing around with any settings.)


Yesterday, I could not get XP to recognize that second haddrive at all. I also tried booting in Safe Mode but the problem was still there. This morning out of the blue it recognized it upon booting.


Thanks everyone for all your responses. I'll keep checking back here.

.
Click to expand...

Are these drives both IDE or SATA
 
PC Hobbyist said:
@ PC eye: If I run "sfc scannow" and errors are found, will they automatically be fixed or is there something I need to do?
Click to expand...


When running the system file checker it will prompt for the Windows installation disk to first perform a system file verification process. That insures that all essential system files needed to run Windows are intact. If it finds any changed somehow or missing it will overwrite any found corrupted somehow and simply copy replacements for any found missing. That repair tool was first included in Windows 98SE.

PC Hobbyist said:
Also, I was planning on writing another thread about my "system restore" problem, but I'll mention it here in case that plays a role somehow.I recently noticed that any attempt to do a system restore fails. After reboot, I get the error that it failed and that no changes were made to the computer. This happens with the automatic "system checkpoints" that my computer does (don't really know what that is) and also with restore points I have created.
Click to expand...

The system restore process won't help with this unfortunately. Your problem stems from XP's lack of detecting the second drive despite the Vista entry in the mbr. Since this isn't seen 100% of the time you could try rebooting the system when this is seen to see if the restart is all that is needed. When this is happening XP is not fully loading where it recognises the current partitioning theme.
 
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