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We have a problem! W2K comp intermittently failed to respond to power & reboot buttons. Shorting the appropriate pins on the mobo to test button functionality brought no reponse. Conclusion mobo faulty. installed new Gigabyte K7 mobo (SiS 748 chipset), AMD 2600 CPU, 512 Mb DDR RAM, Matrox G550 dual head AGP video, Quantum 20Gb HDD. Problem - W2K fails to start Hangs with a white bar across bottom of screen. Try to restart in safe mode. No joy! Hangs! Attempt repair option from W2K installation CD. Error message "Installation cannot find a hdd". HDD jumpered as 'master' on the primary IDE channel, & is the only hdd. BIOS correctly identifies hdd. NTFS boot disk also sees hdd & major folders. Try replacing hdd data cable. Still no joy. Replaced hdd - W2K installation 'sees' it. I guess my major questions are:
The old drive has been running perfectly, & can still be 'seen' by my NTFS boot floppy. Is it likely that the mobo problems have caused some damage to it? Or have they been caused by a faulty drive?
As there anything that I can do to fix the problem?
If I install W2K to the replacement drive (tomorrow - 'cos it's late now & I'm tired) how likely is it that the new installation will fail to 'see' the old drive? And is there any way to revive it without losing data?
I'd really appreciate & be grateful for some guidance on this.
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Update 1: Tried again this a.m. Still no joy. Installed a new hdd as master & installed XP. Old drive as slave, and visible from XP. I'm puzzled & frustrated.
Update 2: Eureka! I've found an answer which explains all.
Apparently (according to my informant) when the mobo on a W2K machine has to be replaced, the new one must have the same chipset. If not (and this is what happened to me) the existing installation won't properly access the hdd.
The answer is tore-format the drive and start a new installation from scratch.
My informant feels that the same applies to XP. However, I can't vouch for that
P'raps this info might help someone else out of a hole.
