Second IDE HDD Prevents Boot

[yawnotec]

When adding a second hard disk drive to my computer Windows is prevented from booting up. So far I've tried installing it as:
Primary slave
Primary cable select
Secondary master
Each time, the drive is properly identified by the BIOS but then WinXP Pro will not start. Computer works fine otherwise.
Any ideas?

 

[mailpup]

Are you trying to adjust it from the BIOS or are you changing the jumper on the back of the device? If you have two devices on the same IDE cable, make on the of them master (usually the end one) and the other slave or make them both cable select. You don't have to worry about primary or secondary. That's taken care of by which channel it's plugged into on the motherboard.

 

[yawnotec]

I made those changes with the jumpers and the changes are reflected accurately in the BIOS setup.

 

[SNGX1275]

It looks like you've tried the right ways. Would be nice to know what the jumper is set to on the Primary IDE channel (presumably your boot drive). It has to be either Master or Cable Select otherwise you would likely have problems booting now without the 2nd hdd. And you trying Slave and CS on the primary channel should have had one of them work. Its pretty unlikely, but perhaps your computer is booting normally with the main HD actually being jumpered incorrectly. Might be worth looking at.


Otherwise, I'd say connect only that drive (the secondary one) and an optical drive with a diagnostic cd in, and see if the secondary hd passes all tests. If it boots up from the test CD, then hook up the main hd and the secondary hd on the same channel and see if you can get the cd to boot again.