Problem with Recovery Console in Win2K Pro

[traprh]

I have two basic problems.

The first needs to be addressed before I can troubleshoot the major problem I'm trying to solve. I need to be able to use the Recovery console to troubleshoot my major system problem.

First of all, my master hard drive is a FAT 32 drive. I understand that the Recovery Console will only work with NTFS drives. In trying to change from Fat32 to NTFS (along with any other disk operation such as defrag, etc), I get an error that says something like "can't access disk because something has "exclusive rights" to the disk" It also says "click yes and the operation will be performed at the next boot up". I click yes, but the operation is never done (windows lies to me). I need help in solving this problem.

My second and major problem is one with my slave/data disk (suspect maybe a master boot record problem). Everything had been working for almost a year now. But recently, with the slave drive installed" windows will not complete it's loading process. It will only proceed to just before the point where the system tray loads at the bottom of the screen. At that point, all I have is a blue screen with the active mouse pointer in the middle (not a failure blue screen, but the normal blue backgroundscreen that is there when the icons load). When I disconnect the slave drive windows loads normally.

I ran a check on the slave hard drive with the Western Digital test disk and everything checked fine. Looks like the slave drive is ok. But without windows loading properly with it connected, I can't access my data or digital photos on it.

Any suggestions, on both problems, would be greatly appreciated.

[bAdWaYz]

I would very much like to know what the "something" is that has rights to the whole drive. Also do you maybe have a spare computer that you can slave that drive in and if so will it boot into windows and can you access the data from it?

[traprh]

Thanks for the reply. The actual error message I get when I try to do any disk operation such as defrag, disk checking/error correcting, convert FAT 32 to NTFS, etc is: "Operation could not be performed because exclusive access to the drive could not be obtained. Do you want to schedule the operation to occur the next time your system is restarted? Yes, No?"

I select "Yes" and then reboot my computer. Nothing happens though and the system boots up and loads windows normally without any of the selected operations being accomplished.

Since this is a Win2000Pro system, I'm not sure why my system cannot get "exclusive access" to the hard drive to to perform the above described operations. Note: Even in safe mode, I have the same problem.

No, I don't have a second computer I could slave this to. I feel like I'm caught up in "Windows Hell" on this one.

[bAdWaYz]

Are you sure that you have full ownership of this drive? If its an old slave drive that came from another system you may need to use windows to take ownership of the drive.

[traprh]

I should have full ownership. I built the entire computer from scratch over a year ago with all new components including the slave hard drive. The entire system (with the slave drive) had been working perfectly for almost a year since I built it and the problems just recently started about a week ago.

My initial problems weren't related to the slave drive. I had some other problems and in troubleshooting the system, I took all of my components out of the system, other than my graphics card and master drive, to try to isoloate the problem. Turned out to be memory related which I corrected. Problem with slave started after I reconnedted it. I went through all of the normal trobleshooting procedures of changing cables, trying the slave on it's own ide channel, etc, but always got the same results. I also checked the slave drive with the Western Digital disk and it said that there were no errors on it.

If for some reasons Win 2000 had gotten corrupted slightly and doesn't see the slave drove properly, how would I "take possession of the slave drive using windows". What would I actually have to do?

One very strange thing, when I have the slave drive hooked up and start windows in "safe mode" , windows loads. I can see the slave drive when I open "my computer"--drive F:. But when I click on it to see the contents, my system "immediately"shuts down and enters a restart cycle (almost as if I had turned off power and then turned it back on). That's the strangest thing I've ever seen.

As I said previously, with the slave drive hooked up and not in "safe mode" windows almost loads but stops just short of displaying the taskbar and desktop icons. No error messages, it just sits there and the taskbar and icons won't come up on the desktop. The mouse pointer is in the center of the screen and can be moved, but no "hourglass" indicating activity is with it.

[bAdWaYz]

That is very odd indeed. If you can boot into safe mode but not access the folders or files on the slave drive without it crashing thats just odd. I haven't heard this problem before so I'll have to do some reading on it. Maybe some other guys might have an idea on this one I'll try to make sure it stays near the top for a few days and hopefully we can get this worked out. I really don't think its an owership issue after hearing that you can boot to it in safe mode so let me do some reading and others feel free to post with ideas.

[traprh]

bAdwaYz---Thanks for your time and effort. I appreciate your interest and any help you can come up with. I've been building computers as a hobby for almost 10 years now and have generally been able to solve most routine problems I have come up aginst. This problem appears to be way beyond my level of expertise though.

Someone on another forum suggesed that this may be a power supply problem. That doesn't seem logical to me though as the PS works fine with one drive installed plus it doesn't crash with the slave drive installed when "not in safe mode". The only thing that happens when the slave is installed and normal boot up is selected is that windows simply won't complete the loading process. Very strange.

If all of my data and digital photos weren't on the slave drive, I'd not be that worried about it since my system generally works fine with only one drive installed. I don't know how accurately the Western Digital diagnostics disk checks the slave drive but on two checks I've performed, booting up with that disk, it scanned the slave and said that no errors were found. I'm wondering if there could be other issues with the slave drive that the WD disk doesn't check out.