PCTech Forums

I'm trying to add a second hard drive to my computer, taken from another computer. Recently, the harddrive has caused identical problems in both computers. In both, the harddrive is recognized in BIOS, but the computers freeze on startup. In the computer the second harddrive was originall installed in (and working), a fresh reformat was performed, so nothing exists besides basic xp instal (no sp's or anything). Basically, I'm wondering if anyone knows how to fix this so that i can boot with both harddrives.

You really didnt give enough information for us to go on. Basically your computer is freezing at start up.

How do you have these hard drives configured in the computer?

Also there may be a virus protection option in the bios, if so leave it disabled until your computer has been setup as sometimes it causes errors when setting up windows and you don't want to waste anymore time at that point. When windows has been installed it should be OK to turn this feature back on again.

Virus protection (at least the option in BIOS) is disabled. What exactly do you want to know about how i have it set up? I have one as primary master, one as primary slave (default setup). As for the cables, the Primary Master is on the second hookup on the cable, slave on the first.

If you are talking dual boot using Win98 and WinXP here's the setup....

Win98 must be installed first and reside on the Primary IDE as Master.
WinXP must be the last OS installed.
You first format the new HDD as Slave on the Primary IDE Master HDD with win98 on it.
Then you install WinXP after the Partition and Format has been done.
The Format and Installation must be on the PC that the Dual Boot is being created on.
Also Win98 cannot read NTSF...the new drive with XP must be Formated FAT32.

Does that help?

Cactus

Thanks cactus, unfortunately I only have xp installed on the main harddrive, looking to reformat but i want to put files on the extra harddrive. (Entire season of cowboy bebop, etc, too big for cd's.)

Hey aj4554:
I have 5 Hard Drives on one of my computers running XP Pro, formatted NTFS on all of them. About 2 months ago, one of the hard drives was freezing up and giving me a bad headace trying to fix it. I did some searching on the net for help. I ran into an article where a certified tech
had the same problems. He contacted about 50 other Tech-heads and had them to write out what they do when their hard drives start acting up. He published their answers; 47 of their answers were the same.
Take your hard drive (after it's cooled down) put it in a heavy sealable plastic bag (ie: Ziploc Freezer Bag) suck out as much air as you can, seal it and put it in your freezer for 24 hours. After 24 hours take it out and hook it up as fast as possible and copy what information that is on the drive to another drive. I know your drive is empty but you should find out if the drive is going bad (It shouldn't freeze up until it gets hot.) "CAUTION, CAUTION, CAUTION!!!!!!
This is a LAST RESORT test for a hard drive. They all claim that you can only do this once, after that, freezing won't help and may damage the drive. I did this on my bad hard drive that I mentioned above and was able to copy about 45gigs of infomation to one of the other drives.
BUT REMEMBER "ANYONE" THAT READ THIS REPLY! IF YOUR DRIVE HAS OTHER PROBLEMS AND YOU DO FREEZE IT FOR TESTING, YOU MAY ALSO BE RUINING IT FOR ANYOTHER TYPE OF REPAIR!