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Author Topic: 2nd Hdd  (Read 6604 times)

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-rusher

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2nd Hdd
« on: June 18, 2009, 09:30:47 PM »
ok this is kind of confusing but im going to try and explain it as clearly as i can.

so first off i have had 2 hdd for about 2 years. one for my os (at the time XP) and one for games. about 2 months ago i got a virus and i wiped my fist hdd (the one with the os on it) and then i just put in my second hdd and i still had all my music and games. the problem was the virus was still there.
so i wiped my first hard drive again and this time i put vista on it. i then tried to use my second hdd but my computer couldn't find it. so i wiped it and re formatted it to work with vista.
here comes the weird thing. so i can go to my computer and see my two hdd but when i install something to my second hdd it doesn't show up under the start mean-all programs thing. i don't even get shortcuts for them i have to create them. so i currently have two games installed waw and my new  game fallout. sense installing waw i have always had trouble with it but i could still play it. and now im having trouble with fallout, the game will consistently crash on the same thing (ex. lif i look at the moon at night it crashes.) now i know for a fact its not my graphics card, it can handle the game and it runs fine. i think im having a problem with it not being installed right to the second hdd.
so i guess my question is why is my second hdd screwed up?
thanks for the help


                   John

DaveLembke



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Re: 2nd Hdd
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2009, 08:29:16 AM »
If the crashes are somewhat random then its not due to location of installation and more likely a hardware failure of some kind. If always crashing in the same spot it may be an issue where an object ( file ) is unavailable and give an error message usually, although sometimes it can black screen and then crash back out to the desktop.

I would wipe both drives clean and install games and software to the C: drive and store your music etc on your D: drive ( 2nd hdd ), this way any games that were designed with predetermined mappings to expect data to reside on C: will not have any issues if there is a path issue is installed to any other letter other than C:

Splitting your data up in this manner also allows for future rebuilds without fear for lost data.

Problems can also occur if say you installed a game to D:, then rebuilt drive C: with a clean os, and try to associate the games on D: with the OS at C:, in which registry settings mismatch to support  the game and games wont run or will run with issues or they have registry requirements.

-rusher

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Re: 2nd Hdd
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2009, 04:42:57 PM »
i still don't understand why things installed to the second drive don't show up in (start menu-all programs.)
so do you think my second hdd is formatted right, because i was using it with xp and now im using it with vista?