roscoe p pendoscoe

This could fall into a "believe it or not" deal as I myself find it
difficult to believe the machine even boots much less does 90% of
tasks as before.............

Here is what happened.

My self built PC with ASUS P4B533-E m-board was killing 120 and 160gb
Maxtor drives on the raid channel and I deduced (with a little help)
it was the weak power system unit, a 350 watt Enermax. Only one at a
time but a plus in that respect. Maxtor told me they were getting a
great percentage of drives back that had not truly failed, but were
affected by less than adequate PSU's due to the fact we are loading
them to the gills with internals that require clean and proper amounts
of power.I don't know if that really is true, take it for what it's
worth. For the record, those Maxtors were the only 2 to ever fail and
I still have a 1.2gb and 2.0 that I am certain would still work if
needed.

I figured it was only time before the C drive went as I was starting
to hear the "click" that was familiar from before. It was only a 40gb
and figured new plus larger capacity the best option..

To make it easy on myself and save some time I thought I would have
the Best Buy GREEK SQUAB do it for me. They told me that I could go
and purchase a drive off the shelf and while I waited, they would copy
the OS C drive to the new drive. Beautiful! For about 15 minutes at
least.

So, I grabbed a 250gb Seagate this time and had my C drive in a nice
little package and wandered back to the desk to hand it over to the
head GREEK. He then goes off to get an off the shelf software image
package. At this point I am thinking this is not what I wanted. I
assumed they would use the quick and easy hardware HD copy method. I
could have done the exact thing they were now going to attempt and
charge me extra to boot.

Well when the HEAD GREEK returns he looks enormously less confident
and says he cannot find an appropriate software product. The buy it
now and wait, now turns into, "leave it and come back in 14 days" Well
now. Being a very busy guy and also needing this particular PC on a
daily basis I tell him I feel he has lead me down the less than
forthright path and it was not acceptable. This guy was the MANAGER
and seemingly had no clue at this point. With no other SQUABS in sight
I stormed out with a new plan. I would use the included Seagate
software that claims to do what I required and just get it over with.

If you have gotten this far in this now epic drivel, you may as well
finish because here is the very odd part. The upper portion is only to
put reason to what and why I did the unthinkable and stupid next part.

I re-installed the drives back in the PC as Seagate instructed. (I
even read the instructions, no kidding)
Anyway, after about 1 1/2 hours, after what seemed like the progress
bar only moved every 15 minutes one increment, it finally halted
completely and I waited almost 45 minutes. Probably 30, but seemed
more like 2 hours.

At that point I hit CANCEL. A great big mistake SEAGATE said when I
called them. I told him he wasn't here and doubted anyone could have
lasted longer.

Anyway, now the OS seems to be split between the 40gb Maxtor and the
250gb Seagate. The Seagte is also formatted NTFS and Maxtor is FAT32.
It boots from the C drive which is the Seagate and has given itself a
name "DISK2_VOL1".

After a few hours I was able to bring to life my e-mail and internet.
It also prints to all 4 printers on the network but the USB connected
ones require my starting it, then removing all the USB references in
Device Manager (they have conflicts)and restarting and all USB works
fine until I turn it off, and then I need to and do the above again.

Now that you've got this far, you have to try and give me a little
help. Go ahead and grind me into the earth with your virtual heel and
call me all the appropriate names for the stupidly long and endless
verbage. Go ahead, I don't mind and expect nothing less but for some
good info I'll endure it. Besides, "sticks & stones............." you
know the rest so I will spare you more reading.

I cannot use sytem restore. Ghost also does nothing.

It it obvious the OS is split betwen the C&D drives. Remember the 250
is NTFS formatted and the othe FAT32.

I have put off long enough fixing this this properly. One last thing I
have not tried but may have since I have spent much quality time
together with this odd beast is trying the WIN XP Pro repair console.

An issue (more of these I do not need) is I have let my Son use the
original MS XP Pro CD. He cannot come up with it and he hanging from
his ****** from a joist in the ba*****t until he recalls where it is.
There are other issues he has done so please don't condemn my method
.Believe me he deserves it and even his Mother agrees with me. She
even said I might have been too easy on him and she shoots him in his
rear end with his own BB gun when the feeling arises. I told him
repeatedly her cat was sacred and off limits and to limit himself to
plinking pop cans. If anyone disagrees and wants to adopt a 15 year
old adolescent with an extreme case of that popular hyperactivity
disorder write me a separate e-mail.

Back to the subject. I have purchased another copy of XP Pro with
SP/2. Do you folks have any hope I'll be able to access the recovery
console with this CD repair Windows, or should I just go ahead and
reformat the thing and start over? I have gathered up all the drivers
and other necessities but I would like one last attempt at a repair.

Have you folks seen an OS split as this one is and have the PC work
even a little? I am a procrastinator and should have done this
immediately after it happed but I was so annoyed I shot the cat, no
no, I mean I saw the boy shoot the cat. Well whoever did that dirty
deed made the house better smelling and that little f'er won't be on
the kitchen counters or table spreading cat crap that was imbedded
between his cute little cat toes.


Knowledge is like money, the less you talk about it
the more people assume you have.