Computer (Windows) help needed. It's a toughie!

johnfoss · 2003-01-17, 06:32 PM

This isn't a computer forum, but I thought I'd give my friends in unicycling a chance to help.

I have Windows 2000 Pro on my home machine. Main hard drive is working fine, Windows boots fine, software works. Problem is with all the other drives. Second HDD, which is supposed to show as three partitioned drives, shows in Windows Expolrer as one, unrecognized drive. Both CD-ROMs spin, but I can't read any disks I put in. My USB Iomega Zip drive spins, but won't read either. Lastly, my USB-connected camera, with IBM Microdrive in it, won't read.

All this hardware works, and has worked fine the way it's set up. Device Manager says all devices are "working properly."

Computer will boot from CD-ROM, and before loading Windows reads the CD just fine.

So all the drives work, but Windows is having trouble seeing them. I tried the Microsoft Knowledge Base, but so far no luck. Usually it's pretty good for such things. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

gluteous maximus · 2003-01-17, 06:36 PM

Do you have all those externals connected through a USB hub?

Try just unplugging and re-plugging the USB hub at the main USB port.

gluteous maximus · 2003-01-17, 06:53 PM

If you're using a USB hub, that might be the problem. I've noticed that the instructions for many USB peripherals tell you not to use a hub. The manuals for both of my digital cameras, my USB LAN card, my Sidewinder, and my track ball mouse all recommend against using a USB hub. I do anyway, but every now and then, the hub doesn't wake up when I start up the PC.

phil · 2003-01-17, 06:55 PM

Device Manager lies.... hardware can be either faulty or not set up properly to cause problems it won't detect.

Does it work in safe mode? Press F8 right after the BIOS screen and choose it from the menu. USB devices may not work in safe mode, but your other hard drive should.

Phil

johnfoss · 2003-01-17, 07:12 PM

Thanks guys.

No external USB hub. Two built-in hubs, presumably one for the two plugs in back and the other for the two in front. I can try more variations on un-plugging and re-plugging stuff, But I don't think that's the problem. My USB-connected printer seemed to be fine. I don't think it's the connection, it's Windows having some problem reading or displaying drive contents. Plus this doesn't help on the CD drives...

Device Manager lies? Apparently. I will try more experiments in safe mode and see if that gives me any clues. But later, after I get home.

Thanks, but keep those suggestions coming!

phil · 2003-01-17, 07:36 PM

I doubt it's anything to do with USB... that wouldn't stop the disks working.

I assume the digital camera is one where it acts like a normal drive so you can get at the pictures? In that case it sounds like something is going weird with accessing drives.

Does the floppy drive work? More specifically, does any drive with a letter higher than those on your second hard drive work?

Try temporarily removing that drive; it could be confusing the allocation of drive letters, for some reason.

Phil

john_childs · 2003-01-17, 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by gluteous maximus
If you're using a USB hub, that might be the problem. I've noticed that the instructions for many USB peripherals tell you not to use a hub.

The issue with USB hubs is with the non-powered hubs. The powered USB hubs that are powered by a wall wart are fine.

USB ports don't have a lot of power to spare to begin with and sharing several ports in a non-powered hub can cause problems. No such problems when using a powered USB hub.

johnfoss · 2003-01-17, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by phil
I assume the digital camera is one where it acts like a normal drive so you can get at the pictures? In that case it sounds like something is going weird with accessing drives.

Yes, that's what it sounds like. The camera (normally reads like another hard drive.

Quote:

Does the floppy drive work? More specifically, does any drive with a letter higher than those on your second hard drive work?

I forgot to mention that. My floppy drive (A:\) also does not read. But the bad HDD is the last letter in the chain, with the Zip and camera drives having letters in between. The camera's drive letter is assigned dynamically, and disappears when you disconnect it.

johnfoss · 2003-01-17, 08:13 PM

I lied. My main HDD is partitioned up to H:. Currently, the bad HDD shows as K: the Zip is L: and the camera pops up as M: or N:

But the CDs are both lower drive letters.

I'm beginning to wonder if it's some kind of messed up registry problem. I have Service Pack 3 installed. Latest new software on the machine is Norton SystemWorks and Norton Personal Firewall.

john_childs · 2003-01-17, 08:21 PM

The first thing I'd check is the IDE cables inside the computer. Make sure they are all still plugged in all the way, both on the motherboard and on the drives. They can work themselves loose.

Other possibilities are a faulty IDE cable or a failing power supply. Both those failures are hard to diagnose at home. You need to have access to known good parts and swap them into the bad computer and see if that fixes the problem.

Does the BIOS see the hard drives? If the BIOS was unable to recognize your drives it can sometimes go into autodetect mode and try to guess the number of heads and cylinders for your drives. If it reset to the wrong settings then Windows is not going to be able to see your drives. The number of heads and cylinders for the hard drives should be on a sticker on each drive.

Are your drives all FAT32 (no NTFS partitions)? If they are all FAT32 you could try booting with a WIN98SE bootdisk and see if DOS is able to see your drives and partitions. The Win98SE flavor of DOS can read and write FAT32 while Win98 and Win95 are not able to see FAT32 partitions. You can find bootdisk images at <http://www.bootdisk.com/>

Is the Disk Manager in Windows 2000 able to see the partitions?
Control Panel >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management >> Storage / Disk Management.

My guess is that an IDE cable connections got loose or one of the IDE cables went bad.

johnfoss · 2003-01-17, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by john_childs
The first thing I'd check is the IDE cables inside the computer. Make sure they are all still plugged in all the way, both on the motherboard and on the drives.

That was the first thing I checked. "Old" cable is 3 years old. Other cable is about 1.

Besides, if connections were bad, the drives wouldn't show up at all. It's there, and it seems willing to be formatted. I just don't want to. The other drives won't tell me what's on them, but they're all there.

Quote:

Does the BIOS see the hard drives? If the BIOS was unable to recognize your drives it can sometimes go into autodetect mode and try to guess the number of heads and cylinders for your drives. If it reset to the wrong settings then Windows is not going to be able to see your drives.

Nope, Windows sees the drives. Though my second HD may have croaked, or at least lost its MBR or partition information, it doesn't explain all the other non-reading disks. I'd like to figure them out, since I know they work, before taking the plunge and formatting that one.

Quote:

Are your drives all FAT32 (no NTFS partitions)?

That's an idea. I may try that.

Quote:

Is the Disk Manager in Windows 2000 able to see the partitions?

I just learned about Disk Manager today (hey, I'm only a know-it-all on unicycling). I'll try it when I get home.

spokelerlarue · 2003-01-18, 04:54 AM

i don't know if i'm spitting in your face by suggesting this, but. are all of your drives set to the right setting. are they all set to primary, or all to slave? does your cable select whether or not it is a primary? i've had many headaches about these problems. onther question, why the smeg is your second hard drive partitioned so much? it makes no sense, set up the computer with just the bare minimum. no USB no second hard drive. just get it to see all the drives, then slowly work them all in, one by one. i wish you the best of luck.

spokelerlarue

most especially in computers i have noticed that logic gets it's but kicked by reality. like when YOU know it should work and it doesn't.

johnfoss · 2003-01-21, 12:47 AM

Thanks again for everyone for taking the time to reply. Here's some further info:

All drives work. The configuration has been the way it was for about a year. The funny thing is, the drives all still work, just Windows can't seem to read what's on them. I was able to almost completely format a floppy, but the process only failed at the end. I was also able to burn a CD, but not to see if the burn process had worked.

This weekend I played around in Safe Mode. Forgot to do that until John Childs reminded me. In safe mode, everything works fine. All the hardware is fine, and I'm pretty sure the IDE cables are fine. The CD I had burned in regular mode worked fine.

The second hard disk appears to have croaked. It wants to be formatted. Norton Disk Doctor can't even handle it. It keeps telling me to restart my computer to finish the process on it, but that's all it tells me at this point. I may have to write that one off, but I'm not going to worry about it until I fix the more major problems. Then I may try some disk repair software to see if I can get at the data on the old HD.

So, the Windows guru here at my office suggests my BIOS may be bad. Problem is I have a Compaq which came with no information about the bios. I even had to call their tech support (a long time ago) to find out how to access it. How am I supposed to guess F10? The next computer I buy will be from a company that doesn't hide this info from their customers. I'll see if there are any updates for this BIOS. But remember the machine was working fine before, for many months.

The most recent big change on the computer was the update of my Norton System Works to the 2003 edition (from 2002), and the new addition of Norton Personal Firewall, replacing the free version of Zone Alarm. I will try uninstalling both of those to see if anything changes.

Any other suggestions from all you smart people?

Thanks,

unisteve · 2003-01-21, 01:20 AM

I know this was said, but I would also like to say that Device Manager is evil. My bro had to uninstall and reinstall his video card about 8 times before it would recognize it properly, and THEN it wouldn't let him change the driver. Microsoft said that its default drivers were better than the ones that he downloaded, and they weren't. And this guy knows computers. It was just Windows being a pain. A testament to Device Manager. Stupid, crappy Device Manager. It doesn't even deserve capitals.

gimp · 2003-01-21, 05:38 AM

Hi John,

Zone Alarm and Norton Anti-virus install filters that check for viruses before any data is allowed to be used by your computer. It is likely that one or the other is the culprit, so uninstalling them is a good thing to try.

Also, I would run msconfig (Start->Run msconfig). Then click on the "services" tab and click the "hide microsoft services" checkbox. Scan the list looking for insidious services. When you uninstalled Zone Alarm, it is possible that the service wasn't removed properly. If you you can identify the service from zone alarm, then you should be able to disable it and the problem should go away.

byron.

2003-01-17, 06:32 PM	#1
johnfoss North Shore ridin' Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Carmichael, CA Posts: 14,932	Computer (Windows) help needed. It's a toughie! This isn't a computer forum, but I thought I'd give my friends in unicycling a chance to help. I have Windows 2000 Pro on my home machine. Main hard drive is working fine, Windows boots fine, software works. Problem is with all the other drives. Second HDD, which is supposed to show as three partitioned drives, shows in Windows Expolrer as one, unrecognized drive. Both CD-ROMs spin, but I can't read any disks I put in. My USB Iomega Zip drive spins, but won't read either. Lastly, my USB-connected camera, with IBM Microdrive in it, won't read. All this hardware works, and has worked fine the way it's set up. Device Manager says all devices are "working properly." Computer will boot from CD-ROM, and before loading Windows reads the CD just fine. So all the drives work, but Windows is having trouble seeing them. I tried the Microsoft Knowledge Base, but so far no luck. Usually it's pretty good for such things. Any suggestions? Thanks, __________________ John Foss "jfoss" at "unicycling.com" www.unicycling.com "Unicycling is a way of looking at the world, making a choice to slow down, finish what you start, doing things not because they're easy, but because they're a challenge." -- Nurse Ben

2003-01-17, 06:36 PM	#2
gluteous maximus Cheeky bastard Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Undisclosed, secret, wherever. Posts: 502	Do you have all those externals connected through a USB hub? Try just unplugging and re-plugging the USB hub at the main USB port. __________________ I'll sit on you... and your little dog, too! "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

2003-01-17, 06:53 PM	#3
gluteous maximus Cheeky bastard Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Undisclosed, secret, wherever. Posts: 502	If you're using a USB hub, that might be the problem. I've noticed that the instructions for many USB peripherals tell you not to use a hub. The manuals for both of my digital cameras, my USB LAN card, my Sidewinder, and my track ball mouse all recommend against using a USB hub. I do anyway, but every now and then, the hub doesn't wake up when I start up the PC. __________________ I'll sit on you... and your little dog, too! "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

2003-01-17, 06:55 PM	#4
phil Average wheels: 1.5 Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cannock Chase, UK Age: 32 Posts: 3,382	Device Manager lies.... hardware can be either faulty or not set up properly to cause problems it won't detect. Does it work in safe mode? Press F8 right after the BIOS screen and choose it from the menu. USB devices may not work in safe mode, but your other hard drive should. Phil __________________ "Cattle Prods solve most of life's little problems."

2003-01-17, 07:12 PM	#5
johnfoss North Shore ridin' Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Carmichael, CA Posts: 14,932	Thanks guys. No external USB hub. Two built-in hubs, presumably one for the two plugs in back and the other for the two in front. I can try more variations on un-plugging and re-plugging stuff, But I don't think that's the problem. My USB-connected printer seemed to be fine. I don't think it's the connection, it's Windows having some problem reading or displaying drive contents. Plus this doesn't help on the CD drives... Device Manager lies? Apparently. I will try more experiments in safe mode and see if that gives me any clues. But later, after I get home. Thanks, but keep those suggestions coming! __________________ John Foss "jfoss" at "unicycling.com" www.unicycling.com "Unicycling is a way of looking at the world, making a choice to slow down, finish what you start, doing things not because they're easy, but because they're a challenge." -- Nurse Ben

2003-01-17, 07:36 PM	#6
phil Average wheels: 1.5 Join Date: May 2002 Location: Cannock Chase, UK Age: 32 Posts: 3,382	I doubt it's anything to do with USB... that wouldn't stop the disks working. I assume the digital camera is one where it acts like a normal drive so you can get at the pictures? In that case it sounds like something is going weird with accessing drives. Does the floppy drive work? More specifically, does any drive with a letter higher than those on your second hard drive work? Try temporarily removing that drive; it could be confusing the allocation of drive letters, for some reason. Phil __________________ "Cattle Prods solve most of life's little problems."

2003-01-17, 08:13 PM	#9
johnfoss North Shore ridin' Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Carmichael, CA Posts: 14,932	I lied. My main HDD is partitioned up to H:. Currently, the bad HDD shows as K: the Zip is L: and the camera pops up as M: or N: But the CDs are both lower drive letters. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some kind of messed up registry problem. I have Service Pack 3 installed. Latest new software on the machine is Norton SystemWorks and Norton Personal Firewall. __________________ John Foss "jfoss" at "unicycling.com" www.unicycling.com "Unicycling is a way of looking at the world, making a choice to slow down, finish what you start, doing things not because they're easy, but because they're a challenge." -- Nurse Ben

2003-01-17, 08:21 PM	#10
john_childs Guinness Mojo Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Portland, Oregon USA Posts: 12,420	The first thing I'd check is the IDE cables inside the computer. Make sure they are all still plugged in all the way, both on the motherboard and on the drives. They can work themselves loose. Other possibilities are a faulty IDE cable or a failing power supply. Both those failures are hard to diagnose at home. You need to have access to known good parts and swap them into the bad computer and see if that fixes the problem. Does the BIOS see the hard drives? If the BIOS was unable to recognize your drives it can sometimes go into autodetect mode and try to guess the number of heads and cylinders for your drives. If it reset to the wrong settings then Windows is not going to be able to see your drives. The number of heads and cylinders for the hard drives should be on a sticker on each drive. Are your drives all FAT32 (no NTFS partitions)? If they are all FAT32 you could try booting with a WIN98SE bootdisk and see if DOS is able to see your drives and partitions. The Win98SE flavor of DOS can read and write FAT32 while Win98 and Win95 are not able to see FAT32 partitions. You can find bootdisk images at <http://www.bootdisk.com/> Is the Disk Manager in Windows 2000 able to see the partitions? Control Panel >> Administrative Tools >> Computer Management >> Storage / Disk Management. My guess is that an IDE cable connections got loose or one of the IDE cables went bad. __________________ john_childs (att) hotmail (dott) com Team Never Wash Your Muni My Gallery :: Unicycling Bookmark List :: World Clock

2003-01-18, 04:54 AM	#12
spokelerlarue The Shepherd of Inflatable Wildlife Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Mapleton, UT Posts: 54	i don't know if i'm spitting in your face by suggesting this, but. are all of your drives set to the right setting. are they all set to primary, or all to slave? does your cable select whether or not it is a primary? i've had many headaches about these problems. onther question, why the smeg is your second hard drive partitioned so much? it makes no sense, set up the computer with just the bare minimum. no USB no second hard drive. just get it to see all the drives, then slowly work them all in, one by one. i wish you the best of luck. spokelerlarue most especially in computers i have noticed that logic gets it's but kicked by reality. like when YOU know it should work and it doesn't.

2003-01-21, 12:47 AM	#13
johnfoss North Shore ridin' Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Carmichael, CA Posts: 14,932	Thanks again for everyone for taking the time to reply. Here's some further info: All drives work. The configuration has been the way it was for about a year. The funny thing is, the drives all still work, just Windows can't seem to read what's on them. I was able to almost completely format a floppy, but the process only failed at the end. I was also able to burn a CD, but not to see if the burn process had worked. This weekend I played around in Safe Mode. Forgot to do that until John Childs reminded me. In safe mode, everything works fine. All the hardware is fine, and I'm pretty sure the IDE cables are fine. The CD I had burned in regular mode worked fine. The second hard disk appears to have croaked. It wants to be formatted. Norton Disk Doctor can't even handle it. It keeps telling me to restart my computer to finish the process on it, but that's all it tells me at this point. I may have to write that one off, but I'm not going to worry about it until I fix the more major problems. Then I may try some disk repair software to see if I can get at the data on the old HD. So, the Windows guru here at my office suggests my BIOS may be bad. Problem is I have a Compaq which came with no information about the bios. I even had to call their tech support (a long time ago) to find out how to access it. How am I supposed to guess F10? The next computer I buy will be from a company that doesn't hide this info from their customers. I'll see if there are any updates for this BIOS. But remember the machine was working fine before, for many months. The most recent big change on the computer was the update of my Norton System Works to the 2003 edition (from 2002), and the new addition of Norton Personal Firewall, replacing the free version of Zone Alarm. I will try uninstalling both of those to see if anything changes. Any other suggestions from all you smart people? Thanks, __________________ John Foss "jfoss" at "unicycling.com" www.unicycling.com "Unicycling is a way of looking at the world, making a choice to slow down, finish what you start, doing things not because they're easy, but because they're a challenge." -- Nurse Ben Last edited by johnfoss; 2003-01-21 at 12:50 AM.

2003-01-21, 01:20 AM	#14
unisteve Yes? Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Ontario, Canada Age: 23 Posts: 1,336	I know this was said, but I would also like to say that Device Manager is evil. My bro had to uninstall and reinstall his video card about 8 times before it would recognize it properly, and THEN it wouldn't let him change the driver. Microsoft said that its default drivers were better than the ones that he downloaded, and they weren't. And this guy knows computers. It was just Windows being a pain. A testament to Device Manager. Stupid, crappy Device Manager. It doesn't even deserve capitals. __________________ "...if a bunch of fellow unicyclists can't rally around, commiserate and say 'chin up, lad', then what is this world coming to?" -GILD

2003-01-21, 05:38 AM	#15
gimp Registered User Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 25	Hi John, Zone Alarm and Norton Anti-virus install filters that check for viruses before any data is allowed to be used by your computer. It is likely that one or the other is the culprit, so uninstalling them is a good thing to try. Also, I would run msconfig (Start->Run msconfig). Then click on the "services" tab and click the "hide microsoft services" checkbox. Scan the list looking for insidious services. When you uninstalled Zone Alarm, it is possible that the service wasn't removed properly. If you you can identify the service from zone alarm, then you should be able to disable it and the problem should go away. byron.

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