Need help with master/slave problem

[ReverendGadgetBoy]

Well, this could just be me being a total HDD noob, but I have a problem and I can't fix it.

I have two HDDs, both IDE. They are a Maxtor 250gb, and a Maxtor 40gb. Both are old, and acquired for free. Anyhoo, I used to have my XP install and everything else on the 250, and was saving the 40 for Linux at some later date. However, I did that PowerTogether thing a few months back, and last week I received my retail copy of Vista Business. I did a full wipe and installed Vista on my 250. However, I'm having some Vista video driver problems, and I want to have XP installed on the 40gb, for games and other things.

I put my hacked XP disc in (which I have used many times successfully) and went through the format and install process. However, when it restarted to continue installation, I told it to boot from the 40 instead of the 250 that was set as default. Instead of continuing the installation, it said the operating system was corrupt, and booted from my Windows disc again. From then on, it didnt even give me the "press any key to boot from CD" option, just simply booted the disc.

My best guess was that it had something to do with the 40gb being set as slave. I don't have any jumpers on my drives, and so they are set on Cable Select, so I switched the cables. However, this made no difference. Even when I set the 40 to the master cable, and disconnected the other, it still came up as slave. I have no jumpers, and I need to know what to do so I can install XP.

 

[pscowboy]

If it's not a Dell, you should jumper them both as Master.

Put the 250 into IDE1 (or Primary)

Put the 40 into IDE2 (or Secondary) - Slave your optical to this.

Temporarily pull the power plug on the 250.

If you have a floppy drive, pop in a boot diskette and kill the partition on the 40 with fdisk. Eject floppy - pop in the XP - reboot. Install should go fine.

After you have XP working the way you want it - shut down - replug the 250. You won't have dual boot at this time.

Edit the boot.ini file in Vista so you get a choice when you boot up.

After right-clicking the file - Properties - uncheck Read Only - OK - double-click, add this line underneath the Vista line in [operating systems]:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

X out and Save - restore Read Only.

Now you also have to edit the boot.ini over on the XP 40. You can do this in Vista - just go to the "D" drive and look for the file in its' root. Change the number inside the parens after the word rdisk from 0 to 1 - you're good to go.