Adding HD causes Windows to crash on start.

[Shurikane]

I have ordered a monster computer. Two 250 GB hard drives on the primary IDE, one 80 GB hard drive on a SATA cable, on which I've put Windows.

I've salvaged a hard drive from my old computer, a 40 GB Maxtor. I realized there were some things I had to pick up from that drive but the old computer had already been skinned to death. So I decided to plug it into the new computer.

I pick up the secondary IDE cable, move the DVD-RW drive to slave, and put the old HD as master.

And now, Windows gives a blue-screen error with several hexadecimal address numbers right on startup screen.

I've tried switching the jumpers: master/slave, cable select, with CLJ, without CLJ, nothing works. And yet, undoing the operation makes Windows boot up perfectly.

A thing to note: the old 40 GB hard drive housed Windows, and that means there was a master boot record on it. I wonder if the new computer isn't being confused because it has two MBRs to choose from... I was also told CD drives and HDs don't mix together, but I don't know if I should believe that yet. I was also suggested to invert the position of the two drives, DVD as master, HD as slave. But before I open my computer case once again, I'll post here.

What options do I have left?

 

[sturm]

Have you tried booting without the cd/dvd drive connected, Just the hard drive on the secondary?
does the bios see the drive correctly?
You might make sure the the bios is set to boot from sata first and not at all on the ide channels.

 

[mozzartusm]

Its probably the OS on the old HD that is causing the problem.

ASUS P5WD2 Premium
Intel 3.73 EE @ 5.6Ghz
XMS2 DDR2 @ 1180Mhz

<A HREF="http://valid.x86-secret.com/records.php?PHPSESSID=792e8f49d5d9b8a4d1ad6f40ca029756" target="_new">#2 CPUZ</A>
SuperPI 25secs

 

[Shurikane]

If so, then I remember that the boot.ini file in the master boot record doesn't point directly to the drive Windows is on but rather "multi disk partition". I am really tempted to go change those words for just the drive letter where the good Windows resides and try that. But if it doesn't work, it's going to be some sport trying to undo the operation...

 

[dunklegend]

Try borrowing a hard drive enclosure. Boot normally then connect the USB enclosure and that will probably work.

<font color=orange>Anything good in life is either illegal immoral or fattening<font color=orange>

 

[_WW_]

I have two installs on my system on seperate drives. The boot.ini file has been edited to this:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Pro" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP Pro_2" /fastdetect

This gives me five seconds to choose which operating system to start up before it launches the default OS.

....WW (5.1)

 

[Shurikane]

Well, I went ahead and created that mini-boot menu of yours (thanks!) However on starting Windows as usual, the error occurred, though the machine had detected everything just fine.

As last resort, I restarted and selected the "old" Windows. Turns out it was the good one! Here's what happened:

In a freak accident from a few weeks ago, I suffered a hard drive corruption on one of my hard drives. I used to have C, D, E, F, G, and D vanished since I deleted the partition and decided to redo it later on. So I was left with C E F G.

Installing the new hard drive caused it to take up the D slot, and I was unaware of it. So for lack of a better way to explain it, the machine went through the drives alphabetically (again, symbolically speaking) and going BEFORE the good Windows in the looking order. So guess what had been starting up all along? The old Windows that would never work!

So, now the good Windows works fine (I'll have to edit the boot file to label the respective Windows correctly until I clear this mess) and I can fetch my files as I intended. Thank you everybody.