2nd hard drive no drive letter

[realrox]

 :-?  i have seen this problem on other forums, but nobody has posted the solution. please help.  
a  my fter upgrading to a new board & cpu (athlon 64 3200+ 939 windows xp pro) my second hard drive (diamondmax 160gb) which was working fine in my old system, shows up in bios and device manager correctly, even shows volume name, but does not show in explorer.  the jumpers are set right.  in the disk management console, it shows as active healthy, but all the options are blanked out except for delete partition.
i can access the drive from norton recovery disk and move or delete files that way and have done so, but i would still like to keep what's there if possible. i have done powermax and everything is fine. i tried uninstalling in device manager & letting windows find it again. it found the hardware no problem, but it still has the same situation. my next step is to remove device again, remove cables, reboot, reconnect cables & see what happens.  anyone have a real answer? i'm pulling my hair out.

[IT-Guy]

what kind of system was your old computer?  Was it also an x86 based computer?

Good Info: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c12621675.mspx#EFAA

[realrox]

the old system was an athlon xp 1800+ on a socket a.  at the point of replacement, the only changed equipment  were the mb & cpu. of course i did a reformat & clean install of everything, & did all the windows updates. and i removed cables & rebooted 2x. that didn't work either. now i'm gonna bite the bullet & reformat the drive [smiley=sad.gif]. keeping my fingers crossed.

[realrox]

that's what worked. used the powermax to quick format, then in disk management also formatted with volume name. & it's there.  unfortunately i was only able to save my vital data, but the rest is reconstructible.  

[Backdated]

You mention "Norton Recovery" and that may be the key to this. What Norton/Symantec applications were involved?

[realrox]

i referenced the norton recovery disk that comes with systemworks 2005 or 2006.  i used this program to access my drives in a dos-like environment  and to see if i could repair the missing drive. i was able to do disk doctor and a mild repair of the disks, but that didn't help either. but the most useful tool was to be able to copy my most important files off the hidden drive and onto my c:\ drive, from which i then copied them to an external hdd.  unfortunately, i will have to put all my music files back on at a later date, since i didn't have room on my external drive or the time to upload them.  so now i have my drive back.

[Backdated]

If SystemWorks was previously installed, then I would point the finger very accusingly at that for causing the problem in the first place.

[rayman]

Tweakiu? might help  - check it out.

Rayman

[realrox]

no, systemworks wasn't installed yet. i just reformatted and installed windows from scratch because i got a new mobo & cpu. but a reformat of the drive solved the problem.

[Backdated]

Hmmmm.... Were the correct services running such as Logical Disk Manager etc?

[realrox]

i think i understand what happened, but i was trying to find a solution other than reformatting.  the sequence of events leading up to this went as follows:
(i'm laying this out in case other people have the same type of problem)
i was having write memory errors. the only references i found to that led to video card problems. i had an nvidia verto 5200 128mb agp.  i was about ready to upgrade, so i bought a radeon 256mb 9250 pci. that didn't solve the problem. then after extensive diagnostics, i found one of my memory chips went bad. i sent it back to the company & replaced it with a good one. it still happened. at about the same time, i got a new lcd monitor.  after installing the monitor drivers, every time i wanted to reboot, the computer would shut down (sort of) instead of restarting.  so now, figuring that any memory corruption affected windows, i tried sfc to try to repair. that didn't work. i then tried to restore to a good configuration.  that didn't work.  it said there was a curruption.  so now i had to re-install windows.  it kept none of my settings and lost my programs.  i then tried to restore from my last ghost. that of course was corrupted.  nothing fully loaded & everything froze when trying to do anything.  then i tried restoring from an older ghost.  since that ghost, i had replaced most of my hardware, cd drive, cdrw, video, monitor and some software. at some point after installing the drivers, the freezing would start again. i restored several times & each time i got  further in my updates, but just when i thought i was finished, the freezing started again.  now i tried to reinstall windows again. this time it put my old version on the d: drive, along with copies of my programs.  i erased them.
by this time, i knew i had to reformat, but i figured if i was going to do that, i would do my full upgrade with a new mobo & cpu.  the guys i bought the stuff from put the hardware together and when they were ready to boot it up, the power supply died.  [smiley=tongue.gif] surprise. that was the cause of all the problems.  so now after reinstalling windows, there was no d: drive. ( i also had my updated drivers there).  
so now i believe that erasing the version of windows & the stuff i didn't think belonged on that drive is what led windows not to read it correctly.  the reformat put back what was needed. i just wish i had more storage ( &  time) to save all the extra stuff i had. live & learn.

[Backdated]

Thank you for that Rox. I was myself attempting to determine a cause so that it may benefit others.

[realrox]

i felt i had to detail the cause & solution, because i was almost more frustrated by the lack of answers from everyone, including microsoft & maxtor, than i was by the situation itself.  if anyone ever found a solution, they never posted it.