Computer problems possibly resolved by detaching secondary harddrive

I have been having a decent deal of problems with my boot up and in the least loading into windows. There were also periodic freezes at some points like watching videos or trying to run scans on my computer. after a long list of things i was trying to do, i detached my secondary hard drive to rotate in a dvd drive to reinstall windows. i hadn't yet changed over to booting off of the dvd, so i got to see that things were loading a lot faster w/o it. i am not sure if that means that just as with detaching some of my usb items earlier to fix a slow boot at bios screen... that there might be a problem with that drive, or some settings with it/windows.

somehow i still fee i may go ahead and reinstall windows anyway to have a clean start. i figured i would just post this here before i did maybe, so i can be prepared if there is something here that might just happen again. also, i feel dumb saying it( and this could very well be part of it) but a while ago i upgraded my video card to one that needed more power cables to power it. after that i didn't have the right connectors/enough cables to power my dvd drives, hard drives and everything else all at once. so i usually was only usually using the 2 hd's or a hd and a dvd drive at a time. i was fine with just periodically swapping between these situations, but after detaching my 2nd hd and seeing this difference i figured i should add all things about my hardware here.

thank you.

 

What is your make/model of PC, and what is your operating system (i.e XP, W7, etc.) and service pack.

You can find this info at "Start"> Control Panel> the System headings

that's generic, but we don't know what you've got.

 

Self made computer running windows 7 ultimate 64 bit, service pack 1. asus m4a79xtd evo motherboard, amd phenom II x 4 965, nvidia geforce gtx 460 etc.

 

I have not yet had a chance to check things like putting that hard drive back in any testing any singular elements to trouble shoot after the fact. but my computer starts up a lot faster with just the HD and DVD drive attached and not my secondary HD. i cant say i have seen a definite reason for it accept the other possibility of having to flip a supposed switch to mark it a "slave drive" that my friend mentioned.
although some things still seem a bit off like steam constantly asking for me to verify a "new computer" im logging in from every time i get on, and some heavy static sounds in one of the games.

 

What you speak of is called a "jumper". They used to be on old EIDE drives so you could designate how the drive was used.

These days with SATA, it's not necessary. The boot drive is the "master", and all others attached to channels are "slaves".

How old is that secondary drive, and has it been a boot drive at any time?

 

At least a couple of years old, but never a boot drive.