i've learned by now that for some reason, XP is very finicky when it comes to added hardware. the slave drive, the video card i added, even the RAM i added wasn't very much liked by my pc as a whole. i tried formatting the maxtor drive with windows once before too. and it also refused. it wouldn't even attempt. so i downloaded the maxtor software for it.
so yeah...added hardware+XP=disaster....thus far, just about every problem i've had has been due to stuff i put in it. so i'm guessing that's why windows was a little pissy about it...
i seriously hope that this sort of detail got resolved in vista. because i don't want to have to go through this with my next rig. i plan on constantly upgrading. so if it's this bad as XP, i can only fathom how bad it could be in vista.