[wannabe1]

In referring to the originsl poster's initial post, he had installed a new graphics card and then had removed it. Is this also true in your case?

At the command prompt, type c:dir, and press "Enter". Do you get a directory of the C: drive? Is Windows listed in the directory?

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Yes, I have removed the video card.

At the command prompt, when I run "dir", it brings up an error that says "an error occurred during directory enumeration." Nothing in the directory is shown.

[JPratt]

Yes, I have removed the video card.

At the command prompt, when I run "dir", it brings up an error that says "an error occurred during directory enumeration." Nothing in the directory is shown.

[wannabe1]

This is not good...

What I would suggest at this point is to set the HDD up as a slave on your running machine and see if you can pull your data off. I'm not sure whether we're looking at file corruption or a failing HDD, but we'd better get the data off just in case it's the latter. That will also allow us to get a little more aggressive in working on the drive. If you need help with this, just holler.

We can try to replace the registry hive, but I just don't think it's going to start the machine...there is something going on after the boot, but before the registry hive is loaded...I just can't get enough of a test out of this machine to determine whether it's a file or bad sectors on the fixed disk itself.

wannabe1

[JPratt]

Is there a sequence the drives have to be connected on the ribbon?

This is something I knew would be possible, but in practice, I am less sure how to do it.

Once I have the two drives connected, is there something I need to do to make one the slave?

I have connected the drive to the working machine, but I can't seem to get the computer to boot from the functioning hard drive first, thus allowing it to open windows.

[wannabe1]

You'll need to jumper the drive as a slave...right now, the machine is confused as it sees two masters on one IDE channel.

Take the drive back out and post back with the make and model number. Then look on the rear of the drive...between the power connector and the IDE connector are a series of pins with a jumper block over two of them. Right now it's set to master. Look for a diagram, or maybe some very small labels near the pins for the correct slave position. Your choices should be "Master" (MA), "Slave" (SL), or Cable Select" (CS). With the make and model number, I can probably help with this if there is no diagram.

Edited by wannabe1, 10 March 2006 - 08:17 PM.

[JPratt]

I seem to be making things worse. The drive that should be the Master drive in the machine I am trying to use to access the drive is now not registering, even though I have replaced all the cables and confirmed that they are secure.

The drive is a Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9, I found the diagram indicating that the jumper should not be present to make the drive a slave. I am going to continue trying to get the Hard drive that was working 15 minutes ago in the working machine to work.

Edited by JPratt, 10 March 2006 - 08:53 PM.

[wannabe1]

If the drive isn't detecting,..boot into the BIOS setup and set the BIOS defaults. This is usually done by pressing the F5 key, but not all BIOS versions are the same. It may be Fail Safe Default or something of that nature. Save the settings (F10) when you exit.

[JPratt]

Alright, I got the other computer working again (apparently pulled the ribbon from the motherboard. It was attached in a place I couldn't see). I will attempt now to get the non-working drive to work as a slave drive on the old computer.

The "non-functioning" drive is not registering on the computer now that Windows is loaded. It is connected, Windows is up, but in "My Computer", it only shows the Floopy, CD-Rom, and its own Hard Drive. (Tho old computer is running Windows 98)

[wannabe1]

Win98 is FAT32 file system...I don't think we'll be able to read the files on the XP drive as it is formatted in the NTFS file system. Do you have access to a machine running XP that you can do this on?

[JPratt]

The only other Windows XP machine I have is a laptop. I don't imagine there's a way to set up a desktop hard drive as a slave drive on a laptop, is there?

[wannabe1]

The only way I know of to do that is with one of THESE.

[JPratt]

I'll give one of these a try, tomorrow.

[wannabe1]

We can get all over that harddrive once you get your data off. I'm just afraid that if it IS the drive failing, we could push it over the edge and you'd lose the data. Better safe than sorry at this point.

[JPratt]

Agreed. Thanks. Right now, I'm already fearing the worst.

[JPratt]

I wasn't able to purchase the adapter at a brick and mortar store, so it will be a couple days before I can attempt to do this.