At 06:29 PM 03/08/2000 , you wrote:
>Hi listers --
>A friend is having a strange problem with his PC. It was a stable machine
>until he installed a scanner last weekend. For some reason, it wiped out the
>extended partitions on his main HD. It's a 2 gb (Western) that was
>partitioned as C:, D:, E:, and F:. He also has a 250 mb drive as G:, and a
>CD-ROM as H:. Now the big drive is all C:, and D: is the small drive. OS is
>Win95. CPU: 486 DX4-120, 48 mb RAM. The new scanner is a Umax Astra 2000P.
>One last item: When the problem first appeared, Windows went into MS-DOS
>compatibility mode. BOOTLOG.TXT said that ebios.vxd was missing. He
>installed that and the MS-DOS mode went away, but the partitions were still
>missing. Would something like Norton Disk Doctor be useful?
>-- Carroll Grigsby

When working with an issue such as this, the first thing to do is UNDO
what caused the problem.  Unhook the scanner and see if the problem
stops.   If it does, then he has a compatibility issue with the scanner.
Most likely the scanner requested a resource in use by the PC and this
conflict disrupted Windows ability to properly display each partition on
the system.

The next step is to determine if in fact the partitions are still in tact.

Start the PC, with a boot disk in the floppy drive.  The system will
go to a Command Prompt, "A:\>"

At this point, use FDISK to determine the existing partition structure,
by viewing each partition and the partition properties.  If FDISK reports
that the partitions are gone, then a major event has occurred in the
PC.  I have seen instances when people have opened the case and
haphazardly begun to touch things inside, creating static electricity
discharges across the system.  This can indeed destroy partitions on
a hard drive, since a small static electrical discharge, just a small arc inside
a PC is akin to lightening striking your house.  You can access FDISK
from the floppy by typing:   A:\>fdisk  [press enter]

You can try using FDISK to repair the MasterBoot record, though if there
is a problem the odds are against this solving it.  At the Command Prompt
type:   C:\>FDISK /MBR    Fdisk will attempt to fix the master boot record.

If the partitions are gone, all is not lost...  but the solution involves buying
hard drive utility software to cure the problem.  These programs cannot always
cure the problem.  The next option is Data Recovery Service companies,
but these services will cost more than buying a new PC.

For most people, if the partitions are gone, it is time to use FDISK to add them
back, format the drives and start over.

But, before you go this far, be real sure that the partitions are gone and it
is not just a matter of a conflict with the scanner.

     Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

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