Community Newsletter: Q&A: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing
- 9/28/07 3:22 PM
Question: touchpad troubles
by fkap1974 - 9/23/07 6:01 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Please don't get me wrong...the touchpad works. However, with newer laptops they have extra 'zones' on the touchpads - they don't work, why? I go into windows control panel under mouse and it shows Synaptics TouchPad V5.9 on PS/2 Port. The spec is as follows:
eMachines M4605 Laptop
14.1 inch viewable screen
1.8ghz Sempron
1 gb of ram
55gb hdd
Windows XP Home edition with sp2
all updates as of 9/20
No additional devices.
I am also on a Dell Inspiron 6000 with XP Pro SP2 that has a touchpad that isn't functional on it either. I know it is probably something I didn't enable or disable, but for the love of pete! Could someone tell me why it is not working or grant a solution to my dilemma?
I am at my wits end.
-Frank
Hi fkap1974 please post your question in the laptop forum
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 9/25/07 10:47 PM
In reply to: Question: touchpad troubles by fkap1974
This thread topic is related to Wendy's question regarding her slave drive disappearing and reappearing.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=265042&messageID=2589322#2589322
My suggestion would be to post your question in the laptop forum here:
http://forums.cnet.com/5204-7587_102-0.html?forumID=69
Good luck and thanks!
-Lee
Answer to touchpad troubles
by iogt007 - 9/26/07 6:04 PM In reply to: Question: touchpad troubles by fkap1974Go to your device manager and uninstall the touch pad device. Leave the touch pad disconnected and restart your computer. Now install the CD that came with the touch pad to install the proper driver for the device and reinstall the touch pad. The device manager is located at: Start/Performance and Maintenance/Administrative tools/Computer Management/Device Manager.
E Machine does not always see hard drive added on.
by Jack van der Willigen - 9/23/07 9:05 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First off I would have to say that unless I missed it you did not bother to mention the type of drives you have and with that I proceed to general thoughts of, Did you move the jumpers to the right spaces or put them on cable select. I always had better luck with "MASTER and SLAVE" for them. Second it helps to have your drive in the right spot on the cable and last off when you boot up go into BIOS and add your hard drive manually. All those being done I do not have another Idea for you.
Faulty hard-drive
by Michael Hodgson - 9/23/07 7:13 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Get a new drive. It has an intermittent fault, which means it's on it's way out. You or a specialist might be able to get it to work for a while, then it will die suddenly, and you will have lost your data, and wasted your efforts. You have already invested more time than it would have taken to get a new drive, and they are dime a dozen.
E- drive issue
by yssk4955 - 9/23/07 11:33 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi,it seems there is a simple problem with your cable which connects your hard drive to the motherboard, try changing the above said cable and also try changing the powerchord which is used to powerup your hard drive .
i am sure it will workout.
with wishes
surendra
You could have one of 3 things wrong
by vbb1964 - 9/24/07 12:55 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Im assuming that you checked your cabling.
Your hard drive could be going bad. I have SATA drive that does this from time to time and I power the machine off completely with the off switch and boot up and it clears the issue for me. I've been using that drive for years with the problem and never lost any data. My point is it may not be a bad hard drive but a problem with your mother board or power to the drive.
The machine you have has a 300 watt power supply (this likely the cheapest supply they can get away with).
The problem is likely the 12V rail of that supply is having a problem putting out enough power. This can be intermitant with temperature changes.
You can look at your Bios setup when the machine boots up to see if the drive shows up. Sometimes you can see this as the machine boots. If the machine shows up in bios but not in Windows then its a operating system issue.
If you can, plug seperate leads from the power supply to each hard drive. Also I use the Master/Slave settings.
Good Luck,
Vincent
Putty let you down? Do you need a secure terminal emulator that is reliable, fast, and free.
rampart-ssh.com for serious IT pros
Hard drive letter conflicts
by marcus_r - 9/24/07 6:03 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Wendy,
Have you noticed if this happens when the external drive is attached? It sounds like the external and the new internal drive may be contending for the same drive letter. When XP starts up it assigns drive letters to drives in the order they were added to the system. You can override the XP ordering by assigning the drive letters yourself. Before you begin make sure all your drives are attached including the external drive then do the following:
1. Go to the start button, select run and type compmgmt.msc and hit "Enter". This will start the computer management console. You can also start this console from control panel.
2. In the computer management console, choose "Disk Management". This console will display all your current hard drives and their associated drive letters in the two windows. The upper window shows the logical information about the drive and the bottom window it will display all the raw drive information for hard disks, cd rom or dvd drives as well as any flash drives that are attached.
3. You should see both of your hard drives here. If the external drive is attached, it is likely that the second internal hard drive will not have a drive letter. Now you have to decide what you want the drive letters to be. The system is probably assigning "D:" to your optical drive (cd or dvd) and "E:" to both the external and the new internal - only when the external is attached, it gets "E:". You can right click on the icon for the new harddrive (not the one labelled "c:") and choose "Change Drive Letters and Paths".
4. Choose "Change" and select a new drive letter for the drive. If you wish you may choose to change the drive letter for the external drive. Remember you much change any hard coded references to the changed drive in you programs that use the affected drive as well.
I also assign my external and flash drives letters like X or Y far down in the alphabet so that they don't interfere with any possible internal drives I may install. You may want to do this will all your external drives as well.
Hope this helps
Answer For Wendy
by wexmary - 9/25/07 6:21 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When something like this works sporadically, the first place I look is the cable. Is it seated tightly at both ends? Is it going directly to the device or getting crunched?
When the 2nd hard drive does not work, does it show up in the BIOS?
On-and-off internal second hard drive
by prikneus - 9/26/07 12:14 AM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If it's visible every other time you switch on your system and your first drive is SATA and your second drive IDE you should try to set (jumper) the second drive in cable-select mode. Good luck !
Possible connection problem
by iogt007 - 9/26/07 5:25 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
The first thing you should check is to make sure the 2nd hard drive connected properly. Clean the terminals on the hardrive and the connecting wires. If there is bad or loose contact the hardrive may not appear in your computer line-up. I had the same problem with one of my DVD drives. Installing a new driver made it re-appear, but it kept disappearing until I cleaned and reconnected the wires.
Time to upgrade
by scottsi69 - 9/28/07 6:49 PM In reply to: Possible connection problem by iogt007Emachine, XP Home and 5yr old hard drive? Bad combination... I would never use a HD that old to back up my data. If you data means anything to you I would invest in a new External Drive and not chance it, even if are able to get it to work consistently. HD's are so cheap nowadays that it is a no brainer..
My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing
by jrwooton - 9/28/07 6:51 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hello, my name is John..I have 27 years in this industry...Air Force trained..and here is what you need to do..
1. type compmgmt.msc in the run command line
2. look for the storage and drill down to the Disk Management tool
3. click on it and look to the right pane and look at the order of your drives
4. I would start by changing the cdrom first...
5. I would start by changing the hard drives out in this order
c: should be boot drive
d: should be your internal backup drive
e: should be your external drive
6. I would make your cd-rom something like T:drive
7. right click on the drive you want to change....
8. click on change letter...
9. then pick the letter you are changing it to, then click "ok"
10. continue until you have all the drive in this order and then I would reboot the system and give yourself a fresh start
This is my first recomendation after that, it is all about drivers and then bios updates or even mabe need to pick up a utility program like System Mechanic to look at your system for any irregularities and there is so many more after this...if you need more help after this make a new post and I can see what else it could be..thanks listening, John
Please do not start fiddling with hardware, this is Windows.
by baldwinl - 9/28/07 7:41 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If your drive disappears sometimes, and the reappears and is working fine, then the drive is fine, the cables are fine, the power supply is fine, the BIOS is fine so DON"T open your computer.
The problem is that Windows cannot find it. There were two solutions about using Disk Manager to assign drive letters - including the response just before mine by the Air Force guy. Just do that and ignore all of the crappy advice about cable select and master slave and "you shudda bought this kinda drive" - if that was your problem you would NEVER see the drive or it would be really flaky (losing data and such).
And for casual backup, this is way better than 1 drives as it is unlikely both will fail at the same time. Of course, the whole computer could go up in smoke and then you are screwed so if the data is really valuable put it on DVD+/-R or an external drive and then put the backup somewhere else (like someone else's house).
Second Hard Drive
by TyPhantastic - 9/28/07 7:57 PM In reply to: My second hard drive is doing the peek-a-boo thing by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I think the easiest solution is to buy an external USB hard drive enclosure and put your old hard drive in there rather than spend a lot of time figuring out the cable jumper settings, BIOS settings, and what not. Those external USB hard drive enclosures don't cost that much and can be found at most computer online stores. Good luck!
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
