I have two hardrives, the second of which is compressed. As my primary drive is partitioned into two drives, they are reported as C and E, with the CD drive being F. The compressed drive is D. I recently replaced D with a higher capacity drive which is uncompressed. I did not decompress the original compressed hard disk before replacing it with the new harddisk. Since then, I have found that it can take up to 2 minutes or more when I logged out of Windows before the message advising that I can safety turn off the computer appears. I tried deleting all files relating to compressed drives on the C root directory. Ran RegClean, Norton Utilities 2000 and System Mechanic to clean up the registry several times. All to no avail. I then went into CMOS and told it that I have only one hard disk. When Windows boots up, it reported the primary drive as C and D; with the new uncompressed drive as E. The CD drive remains F. With this setup, when I log off the computer, the message that I can safety turn off the computer comes on fast. However, when I go into CMOS and let it find the hard drives, and when Windows boots up, I returned to the old setup whereby the primary drive is reported as C and E, and the second uncompressed harddisk is D. More annoying, the problem of the message that I can safety turn off the computer reverts back to taking two minutes or more before coming on. I am presently using the computer with the CMOS set up as having only one drive. My friends advised me that this is not advisable as DOS would be confused, and possibly, Windows as well. Of course, the fact that I have this problem when I replaced the compressed drive could be coincidental. Your advice would be appreciated.

My thoughts are that this problem may be occurring because when you didn’t decompress the old hard drive before replacing it, Windows may still think that the drive at that hardware address is compressed - even though it has been replaced with a new, uncompressed hard drive. Generally, deleting files directly rather than using the proper reversal procedure (e.g., uninstalling programs, or in your case, decompressing the drive) will do more harm than good as there are always other references in Windows (e.g., system files, registry) to the delete files. Your friend is probably right in saying that by telling your CMOS that you only have one hard drive it may confuse your computer. The confusion would probably be caused by the change in drive letter assignments. Because your primary drive is now assigned the letters C and D (rather than C and E) all the reference in Windows to programs on the second partition of your primary drive would be pointing to drive E (the original drive letter) whereas the drive letter is now D. This will mean that Windows may have problems accessing some programs data. It is unlikely to cause any major problems with Windows operation if Windows is installed on the C drive (as this drive letter assignment has not changed). So, you probably should go back to telling your CMOS that you do have two hard drives. To fix your problem there are two things you can try. Firstly, compress your new hard drive and then decompress it. This should sort out any problems regarding the compression status of that drive. Alternatively, you could always reinstall your old (compressed) hard drive, decompress it through Windows, and then remove the old drive and reinstall your new drive.