25 Feb 2005, 18:03, TOM WALKER (1:123/140), wrote to JEAN PARROT:

Hi TOM.

 ->>  WC> It WAS the OEM Windows software that trashed the drive.
 ->>  
 ->>         I doubt this unless as a coincidence the mechanics of it 
 ->> got wrapped at the same time.

 TW> He has to be leaving something out. Teh only way I can see it 
 TW> doing anything is if it is a Custom OEM CD that some Manfacturer set 
 TW> up to be "Self Installing". I have never come across a
Generic Win98 
 TW> CD that did that al lby itself.

Oh yes, Windows DOES do that!  :-((  If it fails to see the drive for any
reason, it believes there is no data to be careful of and starts the
installation with FDISK.  The only way I've been able to recover those is
to move the drive to a NEW system that sees the full size of the drive,
then zero the partition table [MBR].  Actually, I zero the first 10K
sectors for good luck, as it only takes a minute and I am confident there's
NOTHING that will get read into the system when the drive gets back on it's
old MB. 

If I read all of this correctly, Wayne's system now no longer 'sees' the
drive at all.  If this is true, he will most likely have to put it on a
newer system first that will 'see' the drive just to be able to zero the
MBR.


     Good luck...  M.

--- Msged/386 TE 06 (pre)