If anyone can help me with this, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm trying to move some drives around in my desktop system. I began with..

Primary IDE Channel: Master - 200GB Western Digital HDD
Slave - 160BG Western Digital HDD

Secnd. IDE Channel: Master - 250GB Western Digital HDD
Slave - DVDRW Drive


I removed the slave from the primary channel. When I booted, the post took forever and refused to go past the second screen. The BIOS *did* recognize all the correct drives. Primary Master was the 200GB, Primary slave read "none," etc.

The puter tried to launch a Pre-installation Environment program but failed and prompted for the "system disk". When I re-attached the slave drive, everything was back to normal.

I have absolutely completely and totally confirmed that the system is booting to the 200GB Master and not to the 160GB slave. I tried removing the master and leaving the primary slave attached and, of course, the system wouldn't boot then either.

I've checked the jumpers. They're all correct. Plus, I know that the BIOS is detecting the correct drives in the correct role (I.e. the 200GB as master).

I thought it might be because I once had Windows 2000 installed on the problem slave drive, which permitted dual booting, but I long ago removed all that and the Boot.ini file currently shows no traces of this installation. Also, there's no option given for dual booting during boot or when the OS launches.

I've checked the boot order several times. It's Floppy, CD ROM, then HDD 0. It doesn't give an option for a fourth device, but there's one for "Boot Other Devices" and that's enabled. I knew the settings were correct, but experimented anyway. I set the third device to HDD 1. The puter didn't get far into the boot process before it said it was missing some file and couldn't continue. I tried setting it to HDD 2 and the puter booted normally.

I'd like to boot the puter without the primary slave drive connected. I'm open to suggestions here. Thanks.



-Clay

AMD A7VN8X Deluxe
AMD 2800
1 GB PC3200 RAM
128 MB Radeon 9200 video card
3 Hard Drives
1 Floppy, 1 DVD RW drive

Western Digital has two jumper settings: Single and Master with slave.
Do you have the jumper set to single?

Put them all back the way there were.

When Windows is installed, it is records which drive holds the OS in the BOOT.INI file. If this drive # changes because you move stuff around it may not boot.

Windows also installs hidden boot files on what it thinks is the first drive and this may not even be what you see as "Drive C:" and changing the order around can mess this up.

The first thing you need to do is put everything back and examine what is on your drives in regards to the BOOT.INI and the hidden boot loaders.

Yep, zenmaster is right.
If you ever had XP installed on the 160 gig drive, and then reinstalled on the 200 gig without formating or at least disconnecting the 160 gig first, then some of your boot files are still on the 160 gig drive. Your PC won't boot with the drive removed. I always unhook ALL the drives in my system except the one I want to do the installation on when I do a new OS install.

if thats what jitpublisher says
just put your windows XP installation, and go to the "recovery console"
and use the famous FIXMBR and FIXBOOT commands.

Try leaving the jumper off of your 200GB WD.

I've seen before when a WD drive is the ONLY thing attached to a controller that with the jumper in ANY configuration the system won't boot. BUT if you leave the jumper off then it will boot.

Of course if you ever add another WD HDD (or any IDE device really) as a slave on the primary IDE controller then you will have to go back to using jumpers.

GuAmI is right. When running just one PATA WD drive on a cable you dont use a jumper at all. I ran into this on my new 250gb drive and other WD drives.

Thanks for all the responses.

I swear I checked the jumpers fifteen times, but it turns out that the master (200GB) drive was set to 'Master w/ Slave Present'. Maybe I just assumed that the drives on the other IDE channel counted as slaves for this purpose, then forgot that I made this assumption. And I *know* I assumed that since the BIOS was listing the 200 GB as master, the jumpering had to be correct.

In any case, once I changed the jumper setting to plain "Master" (that is, removed the jumper entirely), the problem went away.

Again, thanks for all the advice.