Problems with drive overlay programs in Windows XP

View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q315679

SYMPTOMS

You may experience one or more of the following symptoms:

After the first reboot of Windows XP Setup, you may receive one of the following error messages:
- No operating system
- Setup has determined that Drive C: is corrupted and cannot be repaired. To quit setup press F3.
- Windows could not start because of he following ARC firmware boot configuration problem. Did not properly generate ARC name for HAL and System path. Please check the windows documentation about ARC configuration options and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.
- Stop: 0x0000007b (0xf898963c, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Windows XP Setup may stop responding (hang) and display a blank black screen after the first reboot.
After you install Windows XP, secondary hard drives that worked and appeared correctly in the following operating systems may appear to be damaged or have a size of zero bytes:
- Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me)
- Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
- Microsoft Windows 98
- Microsoft Windows 95

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CAUSE

These issues can occur if you are using a drive overlay software program to control your hard disk. Some versions of some drive overlay programs may not be compatible with Windows XP.

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To resolve this issue, contact the manufacturer of the your drive overlay program to inquire about a fix for this issue.

To determine if your hard disk uses a drive overlay program, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

186057 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186057/ ) How to tell if a drive overlay program is installed in Windows

Warning: Do not use the fdisk /mbr command from the Windows Me/98 Startup disk or the fixmbr command in the Windows XP Recovery Console. These commands will destroy your drive overlay Master Boot Record information if you are using a drive overlay program, and this may cause data loss. To work around this issue:

Back up your critical data.
Partition and reformat your hard disk by using the Windows XP CD-ROM.

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STATUS

This behavior is by design.

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MORE INFORMATION

Hard Disk Manufacturers that Make Drive Overlay Software

IBM

Disk Manager 2000

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/index.html (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/index.html)

Maxtor

MAXBLAST

http://storage.free-driver-download.com/Maxtor/17211/Maxtor-MaxBlast-Plus-3-v3.6-Windows-9x-ME-NT4-2000-XP.html (http://storage.free-driver-download.com/Maxtor/17211/Maxtor-MaxBlast-Plus-3-v3.6-Windows-9x-ME-NT4-2000-XP.html)

Quantum

http://www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/Index.aspx (http://www.quantum.com/Products/TapeDrives/Index.aspx)

Seagate

Disk Manager

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html (http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html)

Western Digital

EZ-BIOS

http://www.d-a-l.com/help/archive/index.php/t-11589.html (http://www.d-a-l.com/help/archive/index.php/t-11589.html)

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.
Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.

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