The Active@ Boot Disk cannot see the drives in my system, what can I do so they would be detected?

Suggestions: The set of common drivers in Active@ Boot Disk may not include the driver for your hard drive controller. {.callout} In this case, you can add or load additional drivers yourself...

Firstly, you will need to identify the type of hard drive controller you have in your computer.

You can look that up in the properties of My Computer — Device Manager — under IDE ATA controllers or under Storage controllers.

Another way is to look up the specifications of your computer from the manufacturer's web page.

Whether you have a Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway or other brand of system, the manufacturer's support pages will identify what controller you have based on your system's model number or other service identifying number.

The manufacturer's support pages are also the location of where you can download the drivers for your system. You will need to download the 32-bit drivers as the Active@ Boot Disk environment is based on a 32-bit version of Windows. Once you have downloaded the drivers, you may load them in one of three ways.

  1. When running the Boot Disk Creator add the driver INF and accompanying SYS files to the "Add Drivers" section. These will be saved to the bootable media and automatically loaded when booting your system up.

  2. You may load the drivers after boot-up. Once booted into Active@ Boot Disk, Click on the Start menu, then select "Load Driver". The dialog allows you to browse to the location of where you stored the driver INF and accompanying SYS files. Clicking on the INF file will load the drivers.

  3. Create a folder called Bootdisk_Drivers on the root of any drive that will be visible after boot (without requiring the extra drivers) and copy the required files to that folder. During the boot process, these drivers will be loaded automatically. You should now be able to access your hard drives after the driver is successfully loaded.

Tip: You can remove the Boot Disk Media at any time after boot-up and insert the media where you have stored your driver files to be loaded.