It is very important not to make or write any change to data on the hard disks without first confirm the hard drive configuration. Hence, the first priority when unable to access information on a hard drive is to verify all of the configuration information dealing with the suspect hard drive.

First step is that In Micro-Scope, System Configuration, Compare Settings check to confirm that there is not an asterisk beside the number of hard drives detected value. If there is an asterisk, either the CMOS is set wrongly, or there is an electronic problem.

Second step is In Micro-Scope, System Configuration, System Information note the information displayed for the hard drive, specially the parameters for the drive in question. Compare these parameters to the parameters in the MBR display under Micro-Scope, System Configuration, and Partition.

Reboot the system to Micro-Scope and go to System Configuration, Partition Tables. Check the information displayed in the master boot record to see if there is any clear corruption If there is no clear corruption in the master boot record, then set the sectors per track in the Master Boot Record to the number of sectors per track at present set in CMOS, set the starting head to 1, starting sector to 1, and starting cylinder to 0, and write the information to the drive.

Display the Volume Boot Sector and use the values for heads and sectors per track to perform step 2 again. If the values match, then the volume boot sector is almost certainly all right. If any values in the Master Boot Record do not match the table to the right, rearrange the values to match the values in the table, and write to the drive.

If the values still do not match, both the Master Boot Record and the Volume Boot Record are perhaps corrupt. At this point, e-mail Technical Support for help in this condition.