edit registry w/o Win 7?

Please excuse me if I'm covering old ground, but when my drive 0 disappeared, it remained so for a good while after booting. Finally, a wizard appeared asking to intialize drive 0. After doing so, it then appeared in Disk Management, and then after partitioning the entire drive within a raw partition (unformatted), it then became visible to my other software designed for managing drives. Of course, this in itself doesn't recover the original partition(s) or the data in it/them, but I used O&O's DiskRecovery for that job.

The troulbe is that booting straight from a System Repair Disc and going to diskpart, executing a List Disk command the disk does not show.

I suspeict that Window Star has hit upon the problem, namely, the adapter card being used.

As Window Star suggested, I think getting an updated driver would be wise.

Furthermore, I'm going to gather info on the card and see if it is at least listed as compatible in the MS compatibility list for Win 7.

The solution may be to buy a card which carries the MS compatibility logo.

WS,
Yes, no, and sorta. I am using board that was marketed about 8 years ago. Just before multi-core processors. It is a dual processor machine I built for video editing. I worked great for years, then a while back the board died. I found on eBay a salvage board /processors in a rack case. I really like it & it worked fine until I started to update it. I went with Win7 64 Professional that worked ok but kept warning me the C: drive was full. I bought a 1Tb drive to rid the C: of stuff, but then found the old board would not see that large drive. The on-board SATA controller is Silicon Image and that is the brand supplied by my vendor, so I added the card to run the large drive. Yep, you are right. Out of the box the card would not see it either. Going to Silicon Image site is an experience in itself; they manufacture and sell to manufacturers. No support for end-users, but yes they have a Bios flash. With enough research, I got it to work just fine. Then bought a partitioning utility from Easaus to copy and/or move data from partitions on Drive 0 to give C: more room. I think that is the source of my continuing problems. I think Easaus set partitions on the 1Tb to be active. Or maybe I told it to do so, me not knowing what I have learned over the last week or so from Karlsnooks. Win7 just about went toes up after that.That is why this thread is so mis-named. KarlSnooks has been so helpful I wish I could do more that just add to his rep. PartitionWizard sees all the drives & I reset all to inactive except C: with the proper program, even bought the paid Professional version.
But now I have to call a halt to the project all-together. I think I just killed my Power Supply. No lights, no fans, no nothing. All this shut downs & restartings... So it's back to ground zero after all.

Karlsnooks,
I can't thank you enough & the button won't let me add any more Rep. Check out the reply above to WS. The whole system went belly up. If it comes back to life after a wait & reset or if I have to do more rebuilding, I will put the 1Tb drive, reformatted in an external case and move on from there.

GranPaSnurf,

If the motherboard isn't dead, then one alternative would be to get a large ata/pata drive rather than a sata drive.

Another alternative would be to get a new motherboard. You can get a real decent motherboard at quite a reasonable price. If finances are real tight, then sometimes a freiendly computer repair store will give you or give you at let's say $10 a board out of a computer that some one has abandoned.

If finances are a little better, then if San Antone has a Fry's, drop in and see what they have. Quite often they have specials. I'm not a fan of Best Buy but they are an alternative.

Mail order houses are NewEgg and TigerDirect.

You might want to consider starting a new thread asking for suggestions on a low-end motherboard. I've always bought ASUS boards.

Oh yes, in the future always use Partition Wizard and no other partitioning software. Partition Wizard is the pick of the litter.

Always use Microsoft Security Essentials for ant-virus software and use Windows Firewall. That combination always works.

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Karl

Well, I am back.
Karl, I thought you might like to see the latest snip. Only the C: drive is active, no dynamic drives. The Partition Wizard is tops! Displayed all the drives and allowed me to make changes. This is, of course, after replacing the Power Supply. Everything runs great. Windows pop at the speed of a pixel. Now I can concentrate on getting the XP Mode installed and setting some data folders/libraries off of C: I will let you know if I hit a wall, if it is alright with you.
As to all the suggestions for buying newer/better, sure, I have to do that sometime, but where is the fun in that? The thrill of the pixel pick n pull! The Sunday afternoon runs to the Goodwill Computer Works store?!
Actually, in one of my unused cases was an Antec 550 PS, tested out perfect, exactly the Power Supply that died (yes, my tester verified it is DEAD) So I ripped out the dead and put in the not quite dead yet.
I bet the erratic display of drives and the system running like molasses was the fault of the crumbling Power Supply.
Thanks again to Karl and everyone who chimed in with ideas. I hope some administrator can change the name of the thread to reflect some of the great work of Karl and others.
dk

That's great. Now before you charge off, please, please make a system image backup of C.

I'll step you thru the crucial part.

WIN | type Backup | ENTER

Now, in the LEFT-HAND PANE, click on Create a System Image |

I'm going to include some snips of the screens I see.
Yours will be similar.

Win 7 will look for possible backup locations.
Then you will get a screen similar to:



Now, despite the fact that title says hard disk, you find the disk that corresponds to the partition on your external USB drive. My external usb has two partitions and I use partition F for backups.

After making your selection hit the NEXT button.

You will be asked which drives to include in the image backup.

Select C and only C.
At some later date, you desire to make a system image backup of other drives, that is good and well, but for right now-please only select C.
Here's what I see:



Hit the NEXT button.

You will be asked to confirm your choice.


Don't worry about any yellow warning triangle. All that says that if backup needs space, that it will delete the oldest backup it finds to make room.

Hit the START BACKUP button.

You will now get this display.


Now you can go make coffee, feed the dogs, go to local HEB, or whatever. This won't take forever, but you can probably plan on 30 minutes. Might be less, might be more.

I'm not waiting for mine to finish so that I can go ahead and send this.
when yours finishes. exit on out of Backup.