DT, mup.sys, and missing... hard drives?

[Irien]

I'm more than a bit out of my depth here, and was hoping someone could offer a little advice or a quick smack to the head.

I installed DT a few days back and ran into what seems to be the same mup.sys problem that's been discussed here and elsewhere. (After DT install, windows reboot freezes before login, safe mode stalls at mup.sys, etc.) I tried to follow the accepted fix, which uses a boot CD to remove dxxxbus.sys- only to find that startup can't seem to see my hard drive anymore.

I'm pretty much at a loss here, since my understanding of controlling virtual drives vs hard drives and exactly how DT does what it does could fit in a very, very tiny thimble. Is it likely that this secondary issue is DT-related, or is the "missing hard drive" thing completely seperate? Either way, am I just screwed at this point? Or is there another way to get access to a command prompt?

Any advice would be incredibly appreciated.

Irien "the newb" Jornauce

[Copytrooper]

Did you try to boot into safe mode and press ESC when prompted yet? Then remove Daemon Tools drivers in safe mode.
Otherwise boot with your Windows cd into recovery console, log on to your Windows installation, change dir (cd) to Windows\System32\Drivers directory and delete Daemon Tools driver files, then reboot and un-install Daemon Tools.

[Irien]

That's the whole problem really. When I try safe mode, the system hangs at mup.sys whether I hit escape to avoid loading the DT file or not. I can't seem to get at a recovery console with a boot CD either, since when gets to the point where startup looks for my hard drives, it doesn't find them, so it refuses to load. I know the drives are very much there- if I try to boot normally I make it halfway through the windows loading screen before the machine freezes up.

But like I said- I'm way out of my depth dealing with machine innards and the intricacies of virtual drives. It seems like a bit of a stretch to assume that DT's responsible for "hiding" the existance of my drives from the boot CD, but installing it was the only change I made to the system before all hell broke loose.

Am I overlooking something more basic?

[Copytrooper]

If you boot from Windows cd Daemon Tools drivers are not loaded, thus the missing hdd can not be caused by Daemon Tools.
What kind of hdd is it? Do you need to load some 3rd party drivers (e.g. RAID or SATA)?