Help Major Crash

[bobdawkins]

Major disaster in FS9, (Drive E) is the one I use for Flight sim (40 GB size,) went to go and do a couple of flights, but wouldn't start up,noticed that my hard disk (E) was titled FS9 which previously it recognized, had changed to Local Disk (E:) took some time to let me know, and then a box popped up with the words "The Disk in Drive E is not formatted, Do you want to format now" does this mean that FS9 does not exist any more, ie Local Disk E has had it and I have to start all over again HELP HELP HELP :brick: :brick: :doho: :doho:

[ianhind]

You haven't added another disk have you?

Even a small USB drive?

Windows has no great respect for the drive order and hence unless you have specifically allocated the drive letter, they can move around.

Hence adding another drive can move what was E: to F:, etc

Just an initial thought.

Ian

[petermcleland]

I think Ian's theory is the most likely...Something got added that re-lettered the drives. Have a good look at all drive contents in case drive F: or whatever is now your FS9 drive. If you do find your FS9 lurking on another drive, I can tell you how to re-register it in the Registry without losing any of your FS9 stuff, but you would probably have to re-install things like FSNav.

[DaveB]

Didn't this malarky stop with WinXP??? I know that in previous incarnations, if you had 2 physical drives and both were partitioned, the first partition of your primary drive would be 'C'.. the first partition of your second drive would be 'D' then the second partion on the primary would become 'E' and finally.. the second partition on the second drive would be 'F'. I really did think XP was far more understanding as it'll simply add the drive letter next in sequence.. especially with USB drives. Having just looked at the 3 drives plus DVDR I have on this pc.. it definately does run the drives consecutively and doesn't fart around moving drive letters as in WinME and before.

If I removed my DVD drive (G).. I'm pretty certain the drive letters wouldn't reassign.. Drive C is C, D, E and F.. my next physical hard drive is H, I, J, K, L and my USB drive is M. If I shove in my card reader.. they go to N, O. Maybe I've just not fiddled :think:

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[ianhind]

Dave

I don't think so. I have recently re-installed XP on a machine with lots of hard drives (used for video) some with several partitions. And I had to allocate letters from the Administrative Tools to get them sorted out

If you have a hard disk as a single partition (more common these days) then there are no partitions to be reorganised so drive letters stay constant.

Ian

[DaveB]

Hi Ian

Okey doh matey ;-)

The pc I refered to above is my old flightsim pc (now my main do-everything pc) and it started life with an 80gig drive partitioned as C D E F and G. This seems odd but it provided a certain amount of commonality between my older systems which were also partitioned so The cd rom (at the time) was added making it H and all was good in the garden.. until the 80gig had a bit of a nightmare caused by a PSU going down. Loads and loads of corrupt files.. many of they system files.
So.. I bought a 160gig, formatted it to C D E and F.. threw the CDrom/DVD in making that G.. made the old 80gig a slave by changing the jumper setting and connected it up. It still worked fine but not as an operating system without having to reinstall windows and it's still there now giving me H I J K L. Over the centuries it's worked.. I managed to fill the lot so added a 250gig USB which sits nicely as M and as mentioned earlier.. the USB card reader (when used) becomes N and O.

D drive isn't the first partition of the second disc.. it's the second logical drive on the first disc.. so on and so forth. Whatever I've managed to do seems far too clever for me so I presumed XP was doing the clever bits I'm sure that if I take out the DVDr.. the drive letters above it won't be reallocated.. it'll leave a hole which is just fine and dandy for a CDRom/DVD. If on the other hand I removed the old primary (now H I J K and L) I couldn't be sure what the USB drive would read.. my guess is it'd go to H as these things do.. they get assigned whatever is the next available as they're removeable storage.

Strewth.. painted myself into a corner now and forgot what I was on about! Anyway.. my lot works ok and it would seem more by luck than judgement

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[nigelb]

Maybe I am missing something but it appears the problem is not a reassigned drive letter but the computer not properly recognizing Drive E. Bob, what do you see when you open "My Computer" - there should be a list of all your drives. Does drive E appear? If it does, right click the icon, select properties then the tools tab and then select the "Check Now" tab to check the disk for errors. First time through, just select the "Automatically check file system errors" If that doesn't fix things then follow the same procedure but this time also select "Scan for and attempt to fix bad blocks"

Another check - RIGHT CLICK the "My Computer" Icon and select "Manage" This invokes the Computer Management Console. On the left side panel select "storage" and then select "Disk Management" This should list all storage devices on the system and their status. On my system, status shows as "healthy" for my main drive. Is your "E" drive listed? Let us know what you find and then we can try to fix things. Don't format the drive "E" obviously. If the drive has gone south, there maybe a way of recovering some of your stuff on the bad drive, and copying it to another drive. This won't fix registry entries but if this is the case, we can address that issue later. There is a utilility available - COA2 - that may help fix registry entries if you have to copy files to another drive.

[bobdawkins]

this is how my Disk's etc are labelled, Disk E is used for FS9

[nigelb]

this is how my Disk's etc are labelled, Disk E is used for FS9

Ok, follow the steps in my post above and try to do a disk check. The good news is the drive appears to be recognized by Windows, at least in "My Computer" Oh, switch the view to "details" to see more info that may be useful.

[bobdawkins]

is this any help