Educate me...

[Draknor]

So, I finally get around to removing my secondary hard drive in anticipation of sending it back for a replacement. No problems. Drive out, everything else back in place, boot up...

Er.

Computer won't detect the primary drive with the o/s on it. Computer wants my windows disk. Okay, fine, there you go. I get into windows setup. Uh oh. No, I don't want to install over my old windows directory.:eek: So, I choose another directory. It starts installing. Sigh.

Comes time to reboot the machine. Fine, do so. Computer still can't detect a hard drive, so the machine wants to try to reinstall windows again.

After awhile of this, I finally just gave up and put the old drive back in and reboot. Setup finishes. My regular desktop is there. Whew (not that it matters, everything is backed up at this point) I do a system restore just in case something nasty was done. Everything seems fine...except...now I have to choose between the two installations of windows xp during startup.

I'll wait while you all call me a stupid user and point and laugh. Go ahead.
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.<whistles idly>
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Got it all out now? Good.:lowsmile:

So, anyway, I guess I got another lesson in not doing things I don't understand. And, if it doesn't work after you make a hardware change, put it back before you change anything else. Probably a valuable reminder.

I do have some questions, though. First, any way I can get rid of the "second" installation of windows (xp pro if it matters much)?

Secondly, why won't my machine boot up with only the one hard drive connected? They're both IDE drives, set up master/slave config - two channels, I guess it's called. I ran across something in the Alienware knowledgebase about settings for either single or multiple drives, but it didn't offer any actual explanation of how to change settings. I tried going into setup and setting the slave drive to "none", but even then the machine won't detect my master drive with the slave removed.

It's not going to matter in the long run, as I'll end up replacing both drives anyway, but a little extra knowledge might be helpful in the future.

[Queed]

Sorry Drak, it just doesn't like you. Maybe because of that weird thing on the back of your head that no one wants to tell you about.

[Prescient]

Check the actual physical jumpers on the drive. Check this page (http://www.mysuperpc.com/hdu/jumper_pins.shtml) if you don't know what i mean by physcial jumpers. Your "Master" drive (the one you're leaving in there) may be jumpered to "Master with Slave". The activity you're describing is exactly what happens when a harddrive jumpered like that is booted without an expected Slave there. Doesn't mean that's the solution to your problem, but that's what I've seen happen before. When it's in there by itself, make sure it's jumpered to just plain "Master".

[Draknor]

Wow. I haven't had to deal with jumpers for a long time.

Anyway, that looks promising. Thanks much.:D

[Draknor]

Drive sucessfully removed with no ill effects. Thanks for the help.:mrgreen: