No boot after slave HD connected

[gshrop]

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional
System Model M925
Processor x86 Family 15 Model 1 Stepping 3 GenuineIntel ~1799 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 07.00T, 4/2/2001
Total Physical Memory 512.00 MB
Drive C:
Description Local Fixed Disk
Compressed No
File System FAT32
Size 37.27 GB (40,022,605,824 bytes)

After formating (fat 32-4 partions) and installing a WD 120g HD with WD untility, I get the message "uable to load os" at boot.
C: is a Maxtor 40g. If the WD is taken off line, the system boots nomally. Any clues as to what the problem is?

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

are you talking about on the same IDE cable

most likely the jumper is wrong on the drives.

Make the first drive jumpered as "master" and the second one as "slave"

[blubomber]

I second JP's post.

another posibility on the Maxtor is a jumper setting of Master with slave present. Then set the WD as slave.

Welcome to TechIMO!!

[gshrop]

Drives are on the same cable.

[gshrop]

thanks for the welcome and the info. I will try your suggestions.

[gshrop]

Repositioned jumpers in combinations, tried another ribbon cable. No dice, "Error loading os". I think I will try reformating 120g drive with fewer partitions. The drive worked fine before partitioning with WD untility.

[Xtreeme]

I dont use those utilites that come with HDD. Do more harm then good unless you need to run on older bios without large disk support. Run fdisk-it'll be good then. Also if its a newer mobo set both drives to CS (cable select) then you wont have ANY jumper issues with your HDD's.

[gshrop]

Thanks Xtreeme, but what I don't understand is the fact that the os is on the master (Maxtor 40g) and the slave (WD 120g) is just partitioned with no extra files installed. After bios boot system reports "Error loading os". I will try the cable select option on both drives to see if this helps.

[jmichna]

From your description, it still sounds like your PC is looking for the OS on the 120gb drive, even though you believe it is properly set as slave.

First, confirm the jumper settings and position of each drive as connected to the cable.

Assuming you are using an ATA-66 (80 wire) cable, the blue connector attaches to the motherboard, and the master drive must attach to the terminal (opposite) end. The slave must attach to the middle connector.

Usually 'cable select' will work, so set jumpers on both HDs to 'CS' (cable select). If that does not seem to work, then set jumper on the terminal drive to 'master' and jumper on the middle drive to 'slave.' Boot up and go into BIOS, make sure each drive is recognized properly, as 'master' and 'slave.'

Also, in BIOS, make sure that the 'master' drive is selected as the (hard drive) boot device (after CD, floppy, whatever order you prefer).

[EDIT]PS: I wonder if the WD drive prep software created an active partition on the second (slave) drive, and that is what is confsing your PC. If all your cabling/connections/jumpers seem correct, maybe try a W98se boot disk, and FDISK to delete partitions on the WD 120gb, and start over using FDISK, or making sure that the WD drive prep software "knows" you are partitioning/formatting a not-booting drive.[/edit]

[Chuckiechan]

BTW, on cable select the farthest one is IDE-0 (master) and the middle one is IDE-1 (slave).

Enableing "look for other boot devices" is a good idea, also.