Computer Freezes at Checkin IDE drives

My computer spontaneoulsy shutdown, then froze at checking IDE drives.. Upon removing my very very old 40gb maxtor drive, it started correctly, How can I get past this step with it in so I can run a data recovery and copy all of the data to a new harddrive? I have a western digitial harddrive cd but thats all and well if I cant get past the checking IDE.... message to boot from my cd-rom and and copy the data.. Any suggestions? I dont really want to save the drive, its at least 7 years old.. but I need to get the data off it..