Dave-H

Thanks stuck, I appreciate that. Are you sure that the Jessops card reader you have is the same as the one I'm trying to get working in Windows 98? The reason I ask is because I also have an older Jessops multi-card reader, which they did supply Windows 98 drivers for. That is a four port box with "Universal Card Reader" on it, and it has to be connected with a separate USB cable. The new one is a five port box and has "All in One" on it, and the USB connector is built into the box and swivels out. The difference is that the the older reader won't read SD HC cards, and the new one will. I'm pretty sure that no manufacturer's driver for Windows 98 exists for the new reader, at least not downloadable from the Jessops site where I downloaded the driver for the older reader. Cheers, Dave.

@dencorso Thanks Den! That's actually a later version than the printed manual I've got (which is revision 1.1a)! I will follow up your suggestions when I've done all the analysis with Charlotte, as I'm hoping that might show some way forward without having to open the machine up again! @CharlotteTheHarlot Well, I managed to get the information out of Device Manager. PRN files, I never want to see one ever again! I managed to convert it to plain text (don't ask!) and here it is. I'm still having no joy with HWinfo. I'm a bit puzzled when you talk about floppies. I've been running it in true DOS from the hard drive. Is that not the way to use it (the documentation is silent as to how to actually deploy the program)? You mention copying himem.sys to the floppy. Are you talking about a bootable floppy? Which config.sys do I modify, the one on the hard drive, in which case why copy himem.sys to a floppy, or a copy of it on a bootable floppy? Sorry, I'm confused here.......... I tried disabling the USB functions in the BIOS, which you can do (as Den says, the only way to disable the sound hardware is by physically pulling a jumper.) This didn't bring the sound hardware to life. I did notice that in this condition I now had 4 disabled "APCI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering" devices, number 3, 4, 7 and 8. With the USB enabled only one (7) is disabled. At least that has shown me that they are disabled because of a problem elsewhere, not that they are causing the problem by being disabled (if you follow me!) If you can point me to getting HWinfo running properly, I'll let you know its findings so you can compare with what Device Manager says. If we don't find anything, then it's off with the covers again and we'll follow Den's suggestions.

Ah yes, I realised after I posted that I'd forgotten about the modem! I don't actually use it now of course, but I've always kept it there as a backup in case my broadband fails (it actually did once, and I had to use the modem again, I'd forgotten how painfully slow dial-up was!) There is no on-board video hardware on the motherboard, just ethernet and audio. There has always been a large number of things sharing IRQ11 on Windows 98, but it's always worked OK. I will try HWinfo again, using the settings you suggest. I have updated the BIOS version to the latest, but I assume that doesn't change the routing tables. I think I may have discovered what caused that BIOS settings reset. I used my USB ZIP drive yesterday for the first time in ages, and it worked fine, but I rebooted without unplugging it. When the system booted up, the BIOS correctly detected the drive after a bit of a pause, and when I rebooted again, the BIOS had reset again! I think what may be happening is that every time the BIOS detects a new USB device connected to it, it resets itself. I've no idea why it should do that, but the first reset was probably caused by my rebooting with my USB flash drive plugged in. It therefore probably has no bearing on the sound problem. I will try booting with all USB functions disabled in the BIOS, to see if that has any effect. There are no reserved resources. I'll report back on all this later, and I'll attach that readout from Device Manager. Thanks Charlotte!

I've run the Craig Hart utility successfully, and I've attached the logs as a zip file. There are three logs, one is PCI logging in true DOS, one is PCI logging using a DOS prompt with Windows 98 running, and one is PCI32 logging at a Windows 2000 command prompt. I was glad to see that to my untrained eye there seemed to be no obvious problems recorded. I didn't have so much luck with the HWinfo utility. I just kept crashing and/or throwing up "not enough memory" messages (this was in true DOS). I hope these logs may show something up. Certainly it seems to be happy with the IRQ tables, which is a relief!

Thanks again Charlotte! I tried your first suggestion, saving and deleting the two .bin files in the inf folder. When I re-booted the system started up normally, which surprised me. I assume that I should have removed the problem device first, which you didn't mention! Anyway, I did that, and it was put back exactly as before. I then tried removing all the devices on the PCI bus, and the steering devices and the PCI bus itself. When I restarted it went through all the motions of installing everything again, but the sound card still has no IRQ. There are now two new bin files in the inf folder. Should I just keep them, or restore the ones I saved? Incidentally, in case you didn't pick this up from earlier, the sound "card" and the ethernet controller (which is working fine) are part of the motherboard, so swapping cards around, at least as far as they are concerned, isn't possible. The other things actually in the slots are the AGP graphics card, a SCSI card, and a DV video capture card. They are all working perfectly. So, does this leave us with a hardware fault? I find that very hard to believe as the sound on Windows 2000 still works perfectly, using the same hardware. I believe that the IRQ steering system on Windows 98 (I assume 2000 is completely different) uses a thing called an IRQ table, which it gets from the motherboard BIOS or the devices themselves. The settings can be changed using the PCI Bus properties in Device Manager. I have tried different settings here (it's on the default at the moment) but nothing seems to help. Is it possible that the system is not getting the information for the sound device, or is getting incorrect information? Could some sort or corruption on the motherboard cause this (I'm still very suspicious of that BIOS re-set which I've never had happen before)? Maybe there could be something wrong in this area which doesn't affect Windows 2000 because it detects devices in a different way? I would phone Supermicro technical support about this, but I'm sure they won't want to know as soon as I say the words "Windows 98"! They did tell me ages ago that the board was never tested with Windows 98, but it's worked for years without any problem. Are there any diagnostics programs which will allow me to see what's on the PCI bus at a very basic BIOS level? So many questions.......

I've already put the new MSHTML.DLL file from KB976749 into my Windows 98 system, and I can confirm that it still works!

Thanks yet again guys! Well, I've had the crate apart, replaced the CMOS backup battery just to be on the safe side, although the one in there seemed to be perfectly OK. I cleared and re-flashed the BIOS, just to completely re-initialise it. System's still working thank goodness, but the Windows 98 sound problem hasn't gone away. I must say I was deeply surprised when restoring a months' old registry backup had no effect on the problem. All the registry backups in the world wouldn't have helped with this it seems. I'm usually pretty good at backing up the registry, even though I got caught this time, but what I don't do is back up my entire Windows folder regularly. I think I may well review that policy now......... I would have bet the farm after the registry restore didn't work that that the cause of the problem was on the motherboard, either a BIOS corruption of some sort (especially after it spontaneously reset on me) or an actual hardware failure of some sort (although why that wouldn't affect Windows 2000 as well is beyond me!) It would seem that's not the case. So, what are we left with if it's not something in the registry or the hardware/BIOS? It can only be a wrong file or files sitting somewhere. I'm pretty sure it can't be incorrect sound driver files as I've uninstalled them and reinstalled them several times, so I can only assume that it's a Windows system file or files that have been replaced perhaps with problem versions. Time for the Windows System File Checker I think...........

Thanks "Charlotte" that's really useful diagnostic information! I checked the registry parameters you referred to. I too have eight "APCI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering" devices. They are all listed under the {9b4e7760-3196-11cf-97ea-00aa0034319d} with "00" data. However under the {cf2524c0-29ae-11cf-97ea-00aa0034319d} key, number 00000007 was missing. That is the problem one. I manually restored the key for that device and gave it "00" data. When I rebooted nothing had changed, but the key was still there. I tried removing the sound hardware in Device Manager, and it put it back as before when I rebooted, and those registry entries still hadn't changed. I them removed the sound hardware and the problem steering device using the HP System Diagnostics program. (This does tell you which devices have a problem, which Device Manager in Safe Mode doesn't). On a reboot everything was put back exactly as before, and the registry entry under{cf2524c0-29ae-11cf-97ea-00aa0034319d} for that device had disappeared again. I am now pretty sure that the sound problem must have appeared when I had the problem with the BIOS resetting itself. I think I'm going to have to open the machine up, check the CMOS backup battery (I'll probably replace it anyway even if it seems OK) and then decide whether I'm going to bite the bullet and clear the CMOS and try reloading it again. I do have a motherboard BIOS recovery boot disk, so I hope I'm covered in case of disaster. If I disappear from here for a while, it will be because I've rendered my PC completely useless and am tearing my hair out trying to get it up and running again! I'm really sorry that this thread has been so much off topic, I hope the MSFN mods understand why it has rambled away from the original subject so much. At least the memory stick problem was vaguely relevant, this problem is almost certainly just an awkward and annoying coincidence which might well have happened anyway but has nothing whatsoever to do with any USB issues!

Tried changing those settings already. As I mentioned in a previous post, disabling IRQ steering made the sound hardware show sensible settings under its resources, but didn't bring it to life, and disabled my ethernet controller instead! Using BIOS instead of Hardware seemed to make no difference at all. Anyway, surely all these settings are stored in the registry, so if they were wrong restoring an old version should have made things come good, which it didn't! I'm convinced that the problem is more fundamental than an incorrect registry setting. I think something has gone wrong on the motherboard itself. I assume it's not an actual hardware failure, or it wouldn't work in Windows 2000, but I think that something has happened in the BIOS. For that reason, although I have downloaded it and am willing to try it, I don't think that Driver Magic will show anything that will solve the problem either. I think I need a piece of software that will analyse the motherboard resources at a very basic OS independent level, to see if the sound hardware is actually being recognised and configured correctly by the BIOS.

Well, just tried a set of old files. I had a set of files called system.els and user.els, which from their sizes looked like they might actually be backed up registry files. I've no idea what generated them, and a web search didn't reveal anything either. They are date stamped some time in last March. Renamed them to system.dat and user.dat, and they worked! The system booted OK, with registry data from eight months ago. Unfortunately, the sound still doesn't work, and the entries in Device Manager are exactly the same! Also the disabled "APCI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering" is there in the device list exactly the same, and I'm sure it was never like that before. Well, this at least proves that the messing about with the registry wasn't what caused the sound problem. It must be something more fundamental to do with the hardware or the motherboard BIOS, as I feared. Still doesn't explain why the sound still works fine in Windows 2000 though, but maybe Windows 2000's methods of enumerating devices isn't affected by the problem, but Windows 98's is. Don't know what to do now. Dare I re-flash the motherboard BIOS? I did it once years ago to install an update, and it did work but it scared the life out of me! I suppose I need to open her up and change that battery too, just to be sure.

@herbalist Yes, the CMOS backup battery was the first thing I thought of when the BIOS re-set itself! The fact that it hasn't happened again in the last few days makes me think that it probably isn't that, as if the battery were flat I'm sure I'd be losing the settings all the time. I'm certainly going to keep an eye on it though! Thanks belatedly for the Test-Run program too. I had a look at it, and the first thing that the readme says is that Windows has to be installed on drive C:, which it is, and in a folder called "Windows", which it isn't! My Windows 98 is in a folder called C:\WIN-98, so I suspect that Test-Run won't work. @dencorso Unfortunately, the disk I made using Norton Utilities turns out to be only a basic rescue disk, which doesn't include the registry files. I do have a few other files in my Windows folder which look like they might be registry backups made by other programs, so I will try them and see what happens (after backing up what I've already got of course!)

Well, I've just spent a frustrating afternoon trawling the web for information about IRQ steering problems in Windows 98. I'm still trying to get my sound hardware to work again before I even think of going any further with NUSB! Didn't actually get very far. It does appear to be an IRQ allocation problem, but I can't think why it should have suddenly happened, or how to resolve it. If only I had some old copies of system.dat and user.dat.............. I'm sure that the key to solving the sound problem lies in finding out why one of the "APCI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering" devices is disabled. I've tried removing and reinstalling the sound drivers, and removing the relevant system devices and letting the system reinstall them, and it always comes back the same. I do have one clue, which I should have mentioned straight away. While I was trying to resolve the system freezes I was getting with my multi-drive USB stick and card readers, I rebooted at one point and found that my system BIOS seemed to have reset itself to its defaults for some reason, and I had to go though the BIOS settings and put them back as they should be. Is it possible that some setting has become corrupted that isn't manually correctable? I've been though the settings umpteen times and I can't see anything wrong, and I'm pretty sure that all the settings are as they were before the problem occurred. There are no settings in the BIOS that directly relate to the sound hardware, and the sound does work perfectly in Windows 2000 so I had been assuming that there couldn't be an actual hardware or BIOS problem. The PCI bus IRQ steering settings are all at the defaults, as they have always been. I tried switching IRQ steering off, and what happened was that the sound harware is now shown as having sensible resource settings (but still can't load the device drivers) and my Intel on-board ethernet card was disabled, saying that it needed IRQ steering on to work! Putting it on again just put things back as they were before. I hate hardware resource problems like this........

Thanks Den. I had already tried that before, removing the sound driver and letting the plug and play system reinstall it, but it never made any difference. I will try removing the sound driver software this time first before I do it, and that will probably make the system unable to find a driver for the sound hardware, unless there is a generic Microsoft driver for it. Then I'll reinstall the Realtek package and see what happens. I'll report back in a while, I'm off to bed (it's one o'clock in the morning here!)

OK, I'd like to get my sound working again before we go any further. I want to start with NUSB again with a completely working system. I have backed up my Windows 98 and Windows 2000 folders, and their Program Files folders, onto a removable hard drive, so I hope I'm covered in case of disaster. The problem with the sound suddenly appeared while I was trying to troubleshoot the original NUSB installation. I became aware that the sound was not working, but all seemed OK in Device Manager at that time, so I thought I would carry on with the troubleshooting and investigate the loss of sound later. I then later became aware that there was a problem showing in Device Manager, but i don't know at what point it appeared. The sound hardware (Realtek AC'97 Audio) is showing a yellow exclamation mark. The general properties show - "The NTKERN.VXD, MMDEVLDR.VXD device loader(s) for this device could not load the device driver. (Code 2.) To fix this, click Update Driver to update the device driver". Needless to say, I've done that until I'm blue in the face and it makes absolutely no difference! I'm using the latest driver (4.06) and the driver installation appears to go without any problems. More puzzling, the Resources tab shows - "The resources this device is using do not match any of its known configurations. To assign resources manually for this device, click Set Configuration Manually." If I click to set the resources, there are no conflicts shown, but the device is shown as using Interrupt Request "00". which is surely not correct. I'm pretty sure that it used to be using IRQ 11. Needless to say, if I try and change it, all I get is "This resource setting cannot be modified"! Everything else on the system seems to be functioning correctly except the sound. The only other clue I've had is by using a utility called "HP System Diagnostics", which came with my HP printer. This has a function to analyse the devices registered by the system, and you can delete any that you want to (presumably the same as you would by going into Safe Mode.) This shows eight "APCI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering" devices. I think this is one each for the five PCI card slots, plus the AGP slot and the ethernet and sound controllers, which are part of the motherboard. One of them is shown as being disabled, and I'll bet it's the one for the sound hardware! The question is, how do I enable it? It doesn't show up in Device Manager, as presumably it's a hidden device, and unlike the Windows 2000 Device Manager, there seems to be no way in Windows 98 of getting Device Manager to show hidden devices. So, any suggestions? Thanks in anticipation.

Well thanks to you guys, especially jaclaz, I've fixed by pen drive! I used a package I downloaded from here - http://depositfiles.com/en/files/dd0oeig46 This included the USB 2K REL90 program jaclaz referred to, as well as a lot of other related programs (including Chip Genius). I don't think that they are all the latest versions of the programs, but they work, and the USB 2K REL90 program fixed things for me. I did try using the separately downloaded Phison MPTool MP2232, but I couldn't get my head around that. It seemed to need device information data files from Phison, which I didn't have of course. I managed to get the pen drive to work as a single 2GB drive, and then just for the hell of it I thought I would try and restore it back to as it was originally (mode 7). This I did, so it's now back exactly as it was before, but with my own personalised device ID! Works perfectly in Windows 2000 and Windows 98 (with its own driver). That has been a very useful exercise, and has taught me an awful lot, although obviously it's not particularly relevant to the original problem! So, the original problem.......... I now have Windows 98 back as far as it's possible to do to the way it was before I first installed NUSB. So, where do i go from here? I'd still like to have NUSB on the system, but I need to know how to best avoid the same thing happening again as happened before.

OK, I downloaded the Phison MPTool MP2232 1.11.0. Is that the one to try first? You'll have to guide me through how to use it, I'm a bit out of my depth here!

Hi guys! I know this isn't directly anything to do with fixing my Integral drive, but bear with me. I have now found an earlier version of a backup of my Windows 98 registry, which goes back to September. I tried using it to see if I could get the sound back, but it didn't work for that. Unfortunately it's not a full backup copy of system.dat and user.dat. What it is an exported text file from the registry backup function of Norton Registry Editor. What it unfortunately doesn't include is the hardware configuration data. Anyway, having done this, and at least restored the installation information and root key information from some weeks ago, I decided to try and restore the Windows 98 system back as much as possible to as it was before it ever saw NUSB. Fortunately I log most installations using Norton Cleansweep, and this generates a log file of every change that the installer makes to the system. I did log the NUSB installation, so I was able to manually remove all the files that it was recorded as having put on the system. I then reinstalled the manufacturers' Windows 98 drivers for my original four port card reader, and the Integral USB stick. The four card reader now works fine again, and I checked that my USB ZIP drive also works correctly. The integral USB stick, with its own driver, now installs in Windows 98 exactly as it does in Windows 2000. That is to say, it appears as two separate drives, but inaccessible. Windows 2000 says they have an unknown file system on them, Windows 98 says they have a FAT file system on them, but they are shown as being of zero size and cannot be formatted. The point I'm getting to is that Windows 98 now treats the stick exactly the same way as Windows 2000, therefore it is extremely unlikely that any registry corruption in Windows 2000 is causing the problem, unless exactly the same condition now exists in Windows 98. I think the stick itself is damaged in that it now contains storage space but with no storage volumes on it. To repair it we need to restore the volume information. I did find a copy of the security program for the stick. Fortunately I had kept another copy in addition to the one on the stick itself. It allows you to lock and unlock the stick with password protection, and change the relative size of the "public" and "protected" sections of the stick. Unfortunately it doesn't now work to repair the stick. It runs OK and you can tell it to change the sizes, a progress bar goes across and it says "writing files" which looks very hopeful (the light on the stick even flashes!) but after it's finished in Windows 2000 the stick is no different. In Windows 98 the program usually crashes at this point anyway!

Went out this morning and bought a new HP 2GB flash drive (v125w). It works fine in Windows 2000 of course , and also works fine in Windows 98, appearing as a single removable drive. However if I put either of my multi-card readers into Windows 98, the same thing happens as before. The first drive seems to mount correctly, but as soon as the second drive mounts the system freezes. So, it looks as if the only problem with my NUSB installation is simply that it cannot mount more than one drive at a time without freezing the system. Presumably from the experience of others this is not a known and expected issue with NUSB. So, why is this happening? Is there still a conflict somewhere with some old software that either hasn't been uninstalled or hasn't uninstalled properly? If so, why does the install only fail the second time and not straight away when the first drive mounts? Can I now get my old Integral flash drive working again in Windows 2000? Not the end of the world if I've hosed it completely by deleting the volumes from it, but it would be nice to get it working again if possible. After all that, will my sound ever work again in Windows 98? So many questions...........

Yes, that's exactly what it is. Your reference to the Apple forum has an entry where Integral support seem to be telling someone that the two partitions on the drive cannot be combined. No wonder I can't get it to be seen as one drive, except apparently by DOS! Whether I can now get it working properly again after deleting the volumes from it remains to be seen. Thanks guys, I really appreciate this! I will do what you suggest and go and buy a new memory stick, and see what that does. I have guests today so there may be a slight delay before I report back. I just hope I don't buy another one and find that it's two drives in one as well! There was no indication on the drive I have that it was divided like that. Of course the original problem was with a card reader that is actually five drives, so the problem won't be solved until we can find out why Windows 98 with NUSB won't mount more than one drive without freezing.

Indeed so, that's exactly what it now looks like, a card reader with no card in it. Done all that, seemed to work OK. Removed a load of stuff with USBDeview. CleanAfterMe had an option to presumably remove "Installed USB Devices" but that looked a bit drastic so I left it. Put the stick back in, no difference at all! However, at the risk of muddying the waters, I do have to report something that happened over on Windows 98. I was trying to find out why my sound hardware isn't working on Windows 98, even with the restored registry. It looks like it can't find an IRQ to use. Anyway, I tried the uninstalling in safe mode option, removing the sound hardware, and the IRQ steering devices, one of which was reported as being disabled for some reason. I also removed the USB2 controller that NUSB had installed support for, and stopped it being detected by disabling the USB2.INF file. I figured that possibly this extra device had messed up the IRQ allocation system. Well, it didn't fix the sound problem, and I now have the USB2 controller as an unused device. Just for the hell of it I stuck the USB stick back in, and it found it as before as two "Disk Drives". I tried updating the driver on the first of these Disk Drives in Device Manager, not thinking that it would do anything as I'm sure I'd tried that before and been told that the best driver was already installed. Well, this time I was prompted for the USBMPHLP.PDR file. I said OK, and to my amazement, the drive became a "Removable Drive". I then found I could assign drive letters to it, I gave it drive I:, and it duly appeared in My Computer. I double clicked on it, and there was an almost 2GB empty drive, at last! I didn't try putting any files on it. I rebooted, and it all stayed the same. Next, of course, I tried the same thing with the other "Disk Drive". Well, everything went the same until I pointed it at the USBMPHLP.PDR file, and then yes, you've guessed it, instant system freeze. So I'm now back where I was before, and the system freezes as soon as I put the drive into the USB socket. It does I think prove one thing, that one drive will install OK, but it won't install any subsequent drives on the same device without the system locking up. It also shows that the pen drive can be read on Windows 98, at least the first bit of it, but Windows 2000 now won't read it. I'm wondering it we're missing something obvious here. Is it possible the the pen drive does actually contain two physical devices, rather than one partitioned device? The fact that DOS can only see one device might just be a limitation of the USB system under DOS. Just a thought.

Well, either of them really, but let's concentrate on the USB stick if everyone else is happy to, because I'm learning a lot here! Actually I think that Chip Genius is showing the stick as two drives, it's just that the screen grab isn't clear enough. Here's the relevant detail - This is what it looks like in Disk Manager - And this is what it looks like in Device Manager -

I did install the HDD Low Level Format Tool in Windows 2000. It still doesn't work. Here's what Chip Genius reports about my pen drive - I have used the Scrubber utility, and it did remove a lot of things, but made no difference to the problem with the drive being seen as two drives. Anyway, I do have progress to report with Windows 98. I finally managed to restore a version of the registry from a few days ago, which has put me back to the original scenario. My sound hardware is still not working, rather surprisingly, but that's a problem for another thread! The scenario I'm back with now is that when I plug the memory stick in, it is detected (still as two drives!) with no freezes, and the two drives appear as "disk drives" (NOT removable drives) in Device Manager. The NUSB system tray icon is there, and shows them correctly as that. However, I can't use them as I can't assign any drive letters to them. So, we're back there again! Sorry, but I have no registry backups from before I installed NUSB. So, where from here........?

But shouldn't the tool show all the drives on the system? Even if it can't read the memory stick, it should still show the other drives surely, not just throw up an error message. The message still comes up with the stick unplugged BTW. What I don't understand is that all DOS utilities show it as a single FAT32 drive. Only Windows 2000 now sees it as two unformatted "empty" drives. I don't think that there is anything wrong with the drive, just that Windows 2000 is mis-detecting it. I have searched the registry for "Filter Driver" and found the following - eBoostr caching filter driver (don't know why this is there, I briefly tried out and uninstalled eBoostr ages ago) NetGroup Packet Filter Driver Iomega Devices Disk Filter Driver (must go with my USB ZIP drive) IP Traffic Filter Driver IPX Traffic Filter Driver PCCS Mode Change Filter Driver (Nokia PC Connectivity Solution, used with my cell phone) Digital CD Audio Playback Filter Driver Serenum Filter Driver Nothing which seems to relate to USB drives.

@Multibooter I do have anti-virus installed (Trend PC-cillin 2002, old but still seems to work fine and I update the definitions every week) and have no reason the think that there are any viruses on the system. It's a while since I did a complete system scan (although PC-cillin has a real-time scan function that works all the time anyway.) Yes, I still have those backups of the Windows 98 registry from the install. I do have Norton Utilities (2002) and did make a Rescue Disk set, so I'll have that too. They are ancient though! I'd have to reinstall every single thing on the system, and that doesn't bear thinking about. @dencorso I didn't partition the pen drive at all, it was that way when I bought it! It's an "Integral" 2GB drive, don't know a model number. Norton Diskedit sees it just fine. Any idea what's wrong with the Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool BTW?

@jaclaz Sorry it seemed that I wasn't co-operating with you, it just seemed that looking into the registry was the way to go as a first line of enquiry. I was also a bit loathe to go down too many other avenues while still in the middle of troubleshooting with dencorso. I was worried that things were going to get horribly confused if I wasn't careful! I don't have access to another computer to try the drive on I'm afraid. @dencorso I've downloaded and installed the HDD Low Level Format v2.36 program, but it doesn't seem to be working properly. When I run it, a message box pops up saying "Error accessing device: incorrect function." If I click OK another box pops up saying "Cannot change Visible in OnShow or OnHide". If I clear that, the program's windows comes up, but no devices are shown. Not having a lot of luck at the moment...........