Installing and Troubleshooting Hard Drives and Floppy Drives in Windows 95

To see the hard drives and floppy drives available under Windows 95, double-click the My Computer icon located in the upper left hand corner of the display. The window that appears displays icons for each drive. Under each icon a drive letter and either a device description (for example, "3½ Floppy") or the volume label for the drive (which may be blank) appears. Explore the contents of the drive by double-clicking on one of these icons.

During Windows 95 Setup and during normal startup of Windows 95, drive controllers for hard drives and floppy drives are detected and software drivers for these drives are loaded. To check for a device conflict that may be preventing access to a hard drive or floppy drive perform the following:

1. Click Start. Click Settings, then Control Panel.

2. Double-click the System icon. The System Properties dialog displays.

3. Click the Device Manager tab. If an installed device is creating a conflict, the device is marked with a yellow circle and exclamation point.

   The devices associated with hard drive/floppy drive use are Disk drives, Floppy disk controllers, and Hard disk controllers.

4. To learn which resource is causing the conflict, double click on the device. In the device's Properties dialog, click the Resources tab. If the dialog contains a Set Configuration Manually button, click on it to see the conflicting resources.

If no conflicts seem present, the above devices are not listed in Device Manager, and/or a hard drive or floppy drive on the system does not appear in My Computer. Check the following:

• Make sure that drives are properly configured and enabled in the CMOS setup (refer to the system user's guide for more information).

• Check the cable connections leading to the drives. Unplug the cables and plug them back in to ensure proper seating (refer to the system user's guide for cable orientation).

• Use your Windows 95 Boot Disk to see if the drive can be accessed at a DOS prompt. If a drive is accessible from the DOS prompt but inaccessible in Windows, reinstall Windows 95 from the DOS prompt.

• Note that Windows 95 cannot read the contents of local HPFS or NTFS drives (these are the file systems used by OS/2 and Windows NT, respectively).

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