Yesterday I formatted the C: drive & reinstalled XP home. Now the system doesn't recoginize my D: drive. The D drive is a separate 300 gb Western Digital drive. When I checked the BIOS settings the D drive was turned off & couldn't be turned back on. Western Digital drives come with software to overcome any HD GB limits the BIOS might have. When I run this software (Data Lifeguard) it gets to a point where it sounds like it'll format the hard drive if I continue. How do I get the system to recognize the hard drive without reformatting?

Is the seperate drive an internal or external? I would try removing the cable on either, reboot, then plug the cable back in and reboot again. It should recognize the change and load it.

Also try FDISK in DOS to check Active Drives/partitions

how old is that copy of XP home?


cuz if its pre SP2 then thats the problem

Is SP2 still available for DL on Microsoft'* website or windows update?

that wont fix the problem, its the coding in the OS, it cant see Hard drives bigger then 160GB.
i had the problem with one of my copys of XP i had to use one with SP2 built in and it fixed the problem.

Hmm interesting info!!!

You would think with how fast computers are evolving that they would have thrown in support for much larger drives. Damn Microsoft!!

That still doesn't explain why it'* turned off and locked in the BIOS?

It'* an internal drive & old version of XP home. I'll try downloading the updates & see if I can get it to work.

yup didn't see that part...

Then reset the bios Settings

Turn PC off.
Un plug it.
Take out Battery.
Move Bios reset Jumper if you have one.

Then that may fix it.

Thanks for all the ideas. Installing the SP2 updates is all it needed.