Windows 7 bug

Sauron

Hello,

I recently installed a copy of Windows 7 (64bit) on my machine; It's a dual boot, and I'm currently using my old XP install on the same PC.

Basically, Windows 7 won't recognise an entire partition (150Gb, NTFS) on one of my hard drives. Whenever it boots up, it tries to run chkdsk; it never finds anything wrong, but when I try to access the partition through explorer, it won't let me; can't even give me any details about it.

I had this same problem with one of the free previews of Windows 7, but I thought they'd have it fixed for the actual release. XP has no problem recognising it.

It's just a storage drive for various kinds of media with the odd program running from it, but it's where I have my music library so it's quite annoying not to have it working.

Is there any reason at all why W7 would have trouble accessing it?

Any help would be much appreciated.

paradisepaddy

Sauron wrote: »

Hello,

I recently installed a copy of Windows 7 (64bit) on my machine; It's a dual boot, and I'm currently using my old XP install on the same PC.

Basically, Windows 7 won't recognise an entire partition (150Gb, NTFS) on one of my hard drives. Whenever it boots up, it tries to run chkdsk; it never finds anything wrong, but when I try to access the partition through explorer, it won't let me; can't even give me any details about it.

I had this same problem with one of the free previews of Windows 7, but I thought they'd have it fixed for the actual release. XP has no problem recognising it.

It's just a storage drive for various kinds of media with the odd program running from it, but it's where I have my music library so it's quite annoying not to have it working.

Is there any reason at all why W7 would have trouble accessing it?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Have you tried..

Administrative tools and "Computer Management"
Then open "Disk Management". Identify your XP partition, and right click it. You will find an option there to change the partition drive letters and paths. You may find that the XP partition has no yet been given a letter (it is not "mounted") Allocate a letter and after applying, reboot and you will find you can see the XP partition......... if its a data drive, a letter higher up the alphabet should be ok i guess. Just don't obviously mess with a: c: d: e: or ones that have been used by system and boot drives

I take no responsibility for anything that happens by the way.

PP

Sauron

Thanks very much for the reply. If I understand you correctly, you want me to make sure that the partition has a drive letter.

The thing is, the drive is visible in explorer; it has a drive letter but it's just labelled as "Local Disk" (which it shouldn't be) and it doesn't display any information about free space etc. like with all the other drives.

When I try to access it, Windows tells me it's either unreadable or corrupt.

I opened up Computer Management and saw that it's listed among the other drives but, weirdly, its file system is marked as RAW, and I have no idea what that means, but that was the only thing that marked it out as unusual.

I changed the drive letter just to see if that would work, and a dialog box pops up telling me that I have to format the drive if I want to use it. I cancelled that and returned the drive to its original letter.

I should stress again that XP has no problem with this drive and W7 recognises all others, even on the same disk.

Any further help would be great.

pickarooney

Do you have 150GB free anywhere else that you could copy it to for safe keeping?
You might need to try a partition recovery wizard so Win7 will recognise it as NTFS.

I know the annoying thing is that the partition seems fine under XP, but there might be some anomaly with it that 7 picks up on and XP ignores.

Sauron

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I have space to keep all the files somewhere else for a while. I suppose I'll just do that.

Would I do just as well to format the drive and then return all the files? I can't seem to find a partition recovery wizard...

pickarooney

You could try this maybe? If it fails, just format.