boot problems

I recently took out my Slave hdd to put in my other pc now when i want to put it back into my primary PC..

now everytime i try to boot with the 2 HDDs in it doesnt,
it tells me to load the boot disc and to press enter,

now the primary disc is the one with windows XP etc on it.


the secondary hdd boots fine on my other pc and and both hdds work fine in my other pc toghether.

 

The primary HD has to be the one with the OS on it and the jumpers need to be set properly. When you reinstalled the drive in the computer your having trouble with, did you install it to the same ribbon inside the computer and put the jumpers back the same as they were originally?

Did you by chance install the OS on this drive in the other machine and now want to put it back in the original machine with the OS installed on the other one? If so this is likley your problem. WinXP integrates to the Motherboard and when you change the Motherboard XP gets rather upset and often times will not boot.

 

everything is the same as before.

and the OS drive has not left this pc apart from when i put it in my secondary pc.

i just tryed putting another hdd i have into this pc and it wouldnt boot either.
it reads the secondary hdd as the only hdd
(just like before)

the jumpers etc are fine
and even the lil thing which determins if its boot or cable select - its on cabel select for both.

doesnt like me having a secondary hdd :|

 

Have you looked in the BIOS setup to see if both hard drives are detected?

 

when both hdds are in only the secondary hdd is dected.

 

If you have connected a known working drive as Primary Master and it does not get detected in the BIOS I would suspect a loose connection / bent pin somewhere.

 

but,
i connect the secondary and it only reads the it not the primary harddrive.

 

I may be getting confused here - you have a lot of hard drives going on! To check I understand the symptoms, please confirm or correct my assumptions:

OK, you have 2 IDE controllers on the motherboard? One is the Primary, one is the Secondary. Each one has a cable and each cable has two connectors for two devices. Total 4 devices. Normally optical drives (CD/DVD) are connected on the Secondary cable. Normally hard drives are connected on the Primary cable. One of the connectors on the Primary cable is designated Master, the other Slave. The hard drive with your OS is normally connected to the Primary Master.

Have any of your hard drives been detected in the BIOS when you hook them up as Primary Master?

It might help to refer to the drives by their size or name ("XP drive", "Backup drive" or whatever) since Primary, secondary, slave etc. refers to where they are connected.

 

yes that is correct..

okay
when the XP and backup drives are connected only the backup drive shows up in the bios hences why it wont boot into windows

but once i unplug the backupdrive the XP drive is detetced fine and boots up no worrys.

 

Very weird.

It must be a BIOS issue. I'm afraid I have no more suggestions at the moment.

 

twiggz;

try setting the drive u want as the master with the small hair pin u links one drive must be hard selected to mstr and the other set with the u link hair pin to slave then try to boot to the bios and see if they are both detected and u can boot to windows

asturnacle