Hi,
It is rather impossible to damage hard disk
content when not in computer ( of course if You don't drop it
on the floor). The only one thing
that comes to my mind is : Are You absolutely sure
that your BIOS can recognize hdd properly ?
I do the same disk replacement with my Toshiba 490CDT
and everything works fine but if by accident drive
parameters were somehow corrupted in BIOS it is
enough for WIN to make same mistakes in VFAT or
to read registry file in the manner that it looks
corrupted. I would recommend to get from Gateway dos
setup program to display the content of BIOS , boot
from floppy with disks installed and then check if
drives are correctly initialized in BIOS with either disk.
regards
rafal
"
> I am baffled by what happened to my Gateway 2100. In preparation
> for loading Linux Red Hat 5.2 I unplugged my WIN95-loaded HD (1.2GB) and
> substituted a brand new formatted HD (2.1GB). This was to only be a trial
> to see if I could access my CD with the Linux OS disk in. It looked fine,
> and seemed to start loading before I realized it would start on its own. I
> stopped the installation and powered down. Switched back to my WIN HD and
> found it booted up fine. BUT, after using an app and attempting to power
> down there was an error message saying that Windows Explorer had caused a
> fault and would be closed down (I had not been using explorer). It never
> closed down and I continued to get this same message. After cliking power
> off and then powering up again there was a menu advising protected mode
> boot-up. This was taken but was followed by message stating there was
> damaged files in Registry. A call to Gateway tech support resulted in a
> decision that HD had to be reformatted and Windows reinstalled.
> Question: Is there any way that anything that resulted from the
> session with the 2.1HD and the Red Hat CD could have been carried over to
> the 1.2HD even if the machine was completely powered down to swap back
> from the Red Hat HD to the WIN HD? (My BIOS seems to automatically detect
> the details of the HD when I do the switch.)
> Thanks for any help or ideas about what to make of this revolting
> development.
>
>
