virus

[joe.s-b]

virus preventing use of hard disk

[ChuckFickens]

No.

if the bios won't see it it's a hardware fault, not a virus.

[joe.s-b]

Thank Chuck and apologies for calling you Chick on occasions - a slip of the pen.
I was thinking it was a hardware fault. I have a spare hard disk so when I can work out how to get inside the correct part of a complicated French case I will check
I am using two different laptops at the moment which are not networked and causing some memory problems. Thanks for your usual good sense among the rubbish comments.