Skraylor

Its a long story but here goes:

First I will give important specs on 2 comps:
Comp 1 (Moms): Win 2000pro, 1 HD(15gig,2 partitions), 433mhz Celeron
Comp 2 (Dads): Win98, 1 HD(15gig, 1 partition), 400mhz Pent II

Ok, parents asked me to make 2 computers become one by way of transferring 2 hard drives (see above) to a new 80gb one.
I first used Norton GHost to create backups of all 3 partitions. I decided to use Dad's case/mobo/proc so I moved all ram/NICs/etc. Then I took the new Western Digital 80gig HD, set it up as master and my mom's HD(2 partition one) as slave in Dads case. Tried booting and bios doesnt detect a IDE Primary Master. Ok, I thought, I switched the 80gig to slave and mom's to master. Now it didnt detect a IDE Primary Slave. Disconnected moms and tried to run the 80gig alone, again, no IDE Primary Master detected. I thought this made sense since I had no boot disk or any form of Windows installed on it.

Here's the big kicker. Seeing if I could add the HD profile to Windows on my mom's HD, I unplugged the 80gig and ran mom's as master alone. It gets past BIOS setup and I get to the screen where it is booting up the bootup screen for Win2k. NOT this Win2k Startup but the screne RIGHT before it where it is still in DOS and it says "Starting Windows 2000" and it has a little bar to show progress and it loads quickly. However, it reboots the computer before it gets to the booting windows screen(see link above). Just to make sure the drive wasnt damaged I stuck the drive back in her original case and BAM, it works fine.

I guess my main questions in this are:
1) Why does it reboot?
2) Why does BIOS basically freeze when trying to detect the new 80gig HD? Do I need to do something to it before it will be detected?

Thanks in advance for any help

mark3567

Hi,

Actually I do not know, but do have suspicions. I suspect that you set this hard drive up on either IDE #1 or IDE #2 as a master and alone on the ribbon cable and it is a Western Digital drive. If you do that, you must remove the jumpers and put it on the end of the ribbon cable. If this is the sceanario you are dealing with, try that.

If you do have both drives on the same ribbon cable, then you need to look at the Other drive on that ribbon cable to make sure it is not set as cable select because many are set that way Cable select and Master/slave do not mix. They should either both be cable select (which I don't recommend) or Master and Slave. I think you are dealing with one of these two sceanarios.

Skraylor

Taking your advice mark, I tried every possible combo of ribbons and jumpers I could think of. No luck tho.

I have come to the conclusion that the 80gig is defective since I have tried it in 3 comps and none have detected it...gonna send it back to TigerDirect and get it replaced.

Still, the question remains why Win2k will not boot up (when there is only 1 HD plugged in) on the comp that originally had Win98. I would be happy if I could just get THAT to work really...

Thanks again

mark3567

Hi,

That is almost a certainty when one partitions, formats, and installs any version of Windows on one computer and moves it to anther. When it boots up, it is looking for the chipset drivers from the motherboard that it was installed on......therefore, no workie....none....nada...... There is probably nothing wrong with the computer, just needs a clean install on that motherboard. I must tell you there are a couple of work arounds, but they are in my opinion, not very successful. Not worth your time.

Addendum: If there is data that is important to you on that drive, put another drive on the machine with a clean install, then put this one on as slave and then you can retreive your data.