etc. -> really ironic thing>> i can boot from this drive, but win2k refuses to speak to it
Driver issue... see my post above. If its showing up with a ! next to it in the device manager, that simply means that Win2k doesn't have a suitable driver. not EVERTHING is plug and play.

Visit the manufacutere and save the driver to the hard drive. Then go into device manager, CDROM properties, advanced, update driver, and choose have disk. browse to location of driver.

I have had the same problem. Win2k doesn't always find every single device.
There is that stray device that it doesn't know. Hell, took me like a week to find appropriate drivers for a sound card...

*could have some of the steps messed up... I did it quickly from memory*