I assume that these drives were once listed as "E" and "F" and that they no longer appear?
First of all, the "E" and the "F" are "logical" drive letters, which means that they are assigned by Windows, and the letters have
nothing to do with the drives other than the association that Windows assigns. Windows could easily assign "D" and "E" to them.
For example, if you have two hard drives and Windows assigns C and D to them (physical association, but, again, assigned by
Windows), then the next two drives it assigns are E and F. Now, suppose that for some reason the D drive becomes disconnected, say
by a loose wire or something. Then, when Windows boots the next time it might assign D to the old E and E to the old F. BTW, you
can go into the disk management software and make Windows pick the letter of your choice. (But I am not sure about C.)
Enough of the background. First, make sure that all the cables are securely connected to all the drives. IDE cables have a way of
working loose. Also, make sure that all the hard drives are powered up and running.
Next, at boot time, go into the cmos settings, commonly called the "bios." Check to see that all your drives are recognized,
especially these two contentious drives. If all the drives are recognized, go into the Windows disk manager and see if it gives you
any clue as to why it does not like these drives. (Operating system problem, not a hardware problem.)
If they are not recognized in the bios, then you have a hardware problem, not an operating system problem. Since you have already
checked all the connections, there is some piece of hardware that is not working. Disconnect everything except your C drive, the
one that your computer boots from. Then add the other drives one by one. They should be recognized by the bios. When you get to
one that is not recognized, it is reasonable to assume that it is bad. Leave it out and reassemble your system and see if
everything works, remembering that the drive letters may not be the same. If you have never gone into the cmos settings, it is not
hard. You won't mess anything up as long as when you exit you choose, "Exit without saving."
It is possible that the IDE ribbon cable is bad. In that case, the bios may not recognize the first drive that you hook up. Try
the other drive all by itself. If that is not recognized, then you probably have a bad ribbon or a bad motherboard. Try another
ribbon if you have one (borrow one from somebody if you do not).
The point of all this is that if it is a hardware problem you are trying to isolate the one piece that is failing: drive, cable, or
motherboard. The other stuff should then work when the bad piece is removed.
Try all this and if you cannot isolate the problem, write again, describing what you did. Good luck!
Dean Kukral
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry Wilshusen" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 3:27 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] E & F drives disappeared
It's a Gateway 840GM running XP. It has a Multi-format DVD+-RW drive
(E) and a DVD rom drive(F).
In MY COMPUTER neither E nor F is listed.
It's been several months since I've used either so not sure when it started.
Some help would be appreciated so I can install tax software.
Thanks
Harry
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