i recently formatted my h/drive and added a new mobo. since then i can only get system to boot if i add another h/drive as a slave to the primary master h/drive. if i try to boot from just my master h/drive the bios wont detect the drive and i have to auto detect everytime. with the 2nd drive connected the system will boot no probs, am i missing the obvious here?!

Maybe your hard drive has a setting for "single drive". Is it a Western Digital by any chance ?

What is the boot device order in the BIOS set to? What are the contents, if anything, on the slave drive?

WHEN YOU SAY IT WONT DETECT THE PRIMARY DRIVE WHEN YOU TAKE OUT THE SLAVE, DO YOU MEAN THE BIOS ISNT PICKING IT UP OR THAT THE OS AINT BOOTING?

(sorry for caps trhere only noticed when i finished lol)

cause i had a similar problem and i could tell u wot i dun to fix it but the only idfference is that my bios still pciekd up the main drive, just wouldnt boot (unless the slave wasin)

1. Check BIOS boot order
2. If it's a Western Digital, to run the drive by itself, have NO jumpers in the drive!
3. Or at least make sure it's set to master if not WD. Not cable select or something.
4. Make sure it's connected on the Primary Channel

the bios wont pick up the main drive unless the 2nd one's connected

Boot device order on bios is ideo cd rom floppy. win 98 is on the slave

it is a western digital 60gb set to master. it did work in the first instance but stopped working on its own after a few boots. gonna try it with no jumpers in the drive

computer now boots up with one hard drive. drive says no jumper or pins 4-6 for single drive. works with no jumper, must have identified the wrong pins when i tried it with 4-6. D'oh Thanx a lot for your help

Even though WDs have a jumper for "master", it is almost always "no jumper" when the drive is by itself.

Glad it's fixed.

I've recently upgraded my boot drive from a 40G to a 300G PATA. I had a 60G Western Digital storage drive connected on the same IDE cable. When I cloned my 40G to my 300G and swapped them, suddenly my computer will only boot when my storage drive is disconnected. When I connect it, BIOS doesn't even complete it's checks and it just hangs with a black screen.When I put my old 40G drive back in, everything works fine. This is for XP.

Anyone have an idea?

bump bump bump