[rda101]

I've recently installed a new copy of XP Pro after a major system failure, and in 'My Computer' an extra partition of my second hard disk has appeared. I installed the OS on my 20GB drive (one partition, FAT32), then when everything was hunky-dory I added my second 120GB (3 partitions, NTFS) drive. As soon as I added it, it showed 4 new drives instaead of 3. The phantom drive appears and disappears when I plug and unplug the 120G drive. The drive is unaccessable, and it says the file system is raw, and the drive connot be formatted.
Is there a phantom drive exorcist out there?

 

[GreyBoy]

The times I've formated a drive with the XP setup disk, it always leaves an 8MB partition, for whatever reason that is. Maybe your install is picking up on something like that. Here is something you could try... Go to the Device Manager, click on View, and then Show Hidden Devices... Scroll down 'til you see Storage Volumes... You should see, in your case, 4 Generic Volumes, (one for your main drive, and the 3 partitions on the other) which are "colored in" fully. If you see more than 4, and one or more are kind of "ghosted out", you can right click on it/them, and choose to uninstall it/them. I did this once when I replaced a drive with another that had more partitions, and XP was still "holding on" to informatin from the old drive.

 

[rda101]

I tried what you suggested (it wasn't ghosted out, but it was there and it didn't have the 'disable' option). It promped me to reboot after I'd uninstalled it, and now Windows won't boot. It always freezes at the windows boot screen. I've tried safe mode, and the driver it always fails at is "Windows\System32\Drivers\Mup.sys"

It has done this before when I re-installed XP after I got a new motherboard. The thing that seemed to break it last time was when I tried to rip a protected audio cd. I had to re-install windows last time.

 

[GreyBoy]

Sorry it "blew up", but, I never said to uninstall a non ghosted out volume. If ANY are solid, even if it's wrong to be there, it should not be tinkered with, only the ghosted out ones.

 

[rda101]

Ok, now the OS locks up when I'm installing it! This is most probably a hardware/driver issue right? I've disconnected all the extra components so its a very basic setup. I've had it all working before, and the motherboard and graphics card are from the same manufacturer so i don't think its a compatability issue. Last time I installed 98, then overwrite that with XP. That took a couple of goes to get it working, with the same thing happening.
Could it possibly be that the version of XP doesn't have certain essential drivers for a component on my motherboard?

completely bemused and frustrated...