Ok. This is an entirely different set of issues than your networking problems.
And there are always lots of alternatives... If you're missing the Admin tools from Control Panel, just right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage". That will bring up the Computer Management console. If you know the drive manufacturer, you can download a diagnostic to run on the drive. Don't know the drive manufacturer? Go to Computer Management, click "Disk Management", right click the drive on the upper right side of the window - it'll say (assuming it's the "D" drive) "Local D (D:)" and choose Properties. Select the Hardware tab. All drives Windows recognizes will be listed. On my system, the "D" drive is in "Location: Location 1 (1)" and my "C" drive (boot drive) is in "Location: Location 0 (0)". This might be different for your system but that's one way to find out. Generally speaking, drives with data on them don't suddenly report they're unformatted unless something - typically bad - has happened. There's a good chance the drive is toast but that's why you'll want to used the drive diagnostics to find out what's up with it. It might require a low-level format to look for and mark bad sectors. That's a good first step... post the results and then we can look at what to do next. Larry -----Original Message----- From: Computer Guys Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 7:52 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [CGUYS] New problem with computer I'm the one that is trying to network my computers thru Zone Alarm. New problem now, maybe related to networking attempts? Internal hard drive (not boot drive) reported unformatted, don't know why. I reformatted, then tried to restore data from backup using Driveimage. Could not restore because drive could not be locked by Driveimage. Thinking that maybe I had to create a partition on the reformatted drive, I discovered that there are no administrative tools on the computer. The Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools window is blank. I'm now thinking that this is the reason that the disk can't be locked. Right now I am backing up the boot drive and thinking that I need to do a Windows XP Home repair from the CD. Is there a better plan? ************************************************************************ * ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************ * ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
