Reinstall XP - 2nd HD issues

[enaberif]

It "was" a limitation of the bios many many years ago which is why companies had a program you'd install before Windows would boot up to allow proper usage of large drives.

After newer computers came out they no longer needed this program but unfortunately the LBA 48bit option wasn't enable in Windows XP and finally was fixed in Windows XP Sp1.

This was a major common thing I'd have to tell people when they would buy a new hdd and come back and say it'd only recognize 127gb out of 250gb.

Its a lot more common than people think.

[Matty D]

Well there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Someone suggested Data Doctor NTFS file recovery to me and I tried out the demo.

Success sort of. It found the files, all in tact, however being the demo it would not allow me to save them. So I had to fork of the cash to get the files. The crappy part was that I had to rescan the drive again which took a few hours the first time

But the kicker is that I left it running over night to wake and find the computer had reboot upon a BSOD. I decided to run memtest+ and BANG instant errors

The whole reason I started done this road was because I thought the ram was bad but it was incosistant in memtest and I wanted to eliminate any other possibilities before going the RMA route. So the data is there, safe and sound, I have the ability to get it but I now need to RMA this ram. This was a costly diagnosis process, the fact that I could have bought new ram for the price of the software is a kick in the pants. The fact that someone will post a freeware that will do the same thing in the next 12 hours, is also a kicker

Thanks to all for your help, hopefully there are enough terms in the thread to be picked up on a search for future people.

[Shadowmeph]

I am glad to hear ( or see lol) that you have found your problem and solved it :)