Slave drive not visabile by XP Explorer

I have a Windows XP Home (SP3) on a 1.7 GHz Celeron machine with 1 GB RAM.

I have an extra hard drive set up as a slave that I use for: 1)Games F: 2) Videos G: It still has an OS and was dual booting. Now whenever a certain user account logs off (multiple users). All drives are set up as Basic NTFS. For some reason, this slave drive is not visible in Windows Explorer unless I do a cold boot (sometimes that doesn't work) if the system is just restarted, it does not see this drive. And the computer has been REALLY slow upon login to any account. I fixed a little bit of the slowdown but I'm still having trouble with the one users account.

that is really strange. has it been like this forever or just since you disabled the dual boot configuration? when the computer starts, the bios lists the hard drives attached to the machine (white letters on a black background). is the drive listed there?
you may have a computer company logo covering this info. if so you will have to enter bios to see if it is listed.

I never disabled the dual boot option. It happened again even after I shut down and did a cold boot. Drive(s) are visible in Explorer just did get the dual boot. It happens every time this particular user account is loged into. I have run so many virus, malware and spyware scanners I don't have a clue what it could be still.

It's a DELL so the DELL splash screen shows on normal boot times for less then 10 seconds. And is just started doing this about two weeks ago. I have tried almost everything. I REALLY don't want to re-install XP AGAIN.

Edited by Firesong, 16 October 2009 - 07:44 PM.

1. open the box and make sure the cables are firmly attached. (IDE or sata?)
2. try a new cable