WinME 1.3GHz 256MB Primary(20Gig-Master 300Meg-Slave) Secondary(DVDROM and CDburner) hope this is in the right forum

During a routine scandisk (inc surface area) of all partitions the system froze while scanning the slave drive. After powering off and repowering, the system would not post. Removed slave: no post. Disconnected secondary cable at mobo and system booted and ran an auto-scandisk. Reconnected secondary cable and slave HDD and normal reboot with another auto-scandisk of Disk D (= Single Partition Slave). Went into safe mode and ran full scandisk of all partitions (autocorrection of errors; which it found and corrected). Scandisk however continued to rescan D: after every reboot.

Antivirus scans negative.

Having done all that I felt it might be time to do a PackardBell facory restore. Backed-up data and removed slave HDD and other non-factory hardware and ran the restore. During the process it would run a scandisk of D: at each autoreboot and when finished there were "apparently" two identical HDDs C: and D: both of 20Gig on a 20Gig HDD! If a file was put in one drive it automatically reappeared in the other one (after a reboot). Also, after any reboot, scandisk would rescan D: Ran Fdisk and it could see the D: drive which I then deleted; reformatted C: and clean reinstall of OS. Same result with mirrored C: and D: drives. Deleted all partitions again with Fdisk and also did Fdisk /mbr. After the next clean install all seems OK.

BTW The slave HDD was originally connected a year ago to recover data from another pc on which the PSU had failed. The OS was removed from it (in fact all files were deleted) though it was not reformatted as a logical partition and I now use it for quick backup storage space.

So I would be grateful for any ideas/insights as to what was going on. Is it more likely that the MBR was corrupted by the freeze during the original scandisk or is the problem more likely to be with the slave HDD starting to fail or indeed something else altogether. It's as if the MBR was reading one FAT table for C: and maybe a backup table for D: at least that's the only sort of sense I can make of it, though I don't understand how Fdisk could think it could see a non-existent/virtual partition.

PS No drives have ever been compressed and all are FAT32.

Have you tried a new IDE ribbon cable?

Have you tried the diagnostic software from the hard drive manufacturer?

That's where I would start. The software should identify the drive down to the serial number...

Paul,
Pleased that you resolved the problem.

So I would be grateful for any ideas/insights as to what was going on

I suspect that the Druid priest has been neglecting his duties re casting virgins off the Cliffs of Moor.

If problem recurs:
Erect concentric circles of 20 ton, granite pillars. Place the PC in the center, and align it with sunrise location on winter solstice (December 21). Then pray to Danu.

May The Tuatha de Dannan be with you.

classicsoftware thanks; yes I will be doing those things, although the little slave drive itself is not a major concern. Those areas would make the inability to post understandable - but would they have also caused the MBR on the master drive to have become corrupted in what seems, to me, a peculiar manner? Perhaps I should have zero-filled but things seem OK after deleting all the partitions then the MBR.

JUAN DOS a Chara, I love the winter solstice, look forward to it each year, not for pagan ceremonies though. Its because its the wonderful moment from which point the days get longer again. I hate the dark of winter just as much as the dark screen when a pc won't post; maybe something prophetic there maybe. ;) - and the scarcity of virgins for those Druids may well be at the heart of the problem!