Error Loading Os

[Bubba924]

Hard drive woes
WEll, let me get started as I am not a great typer.
I bought a maxtor 40 gb hd (19 bucks) and I set it up as a slave on my xp computer. When I nstalled it, IT worked FINE. I even rebooted. Then one day my computer boots up in its cheerfull mood and says error loading os. So I took out the second hd and it booted up fine. When I logged on it said window has recovered form a serious error. I have tried everything to get that hd working. I am knowledgeble about computers because i built mine. anyway yeah i need help.

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[Bubba924]

The HD is working on my other computer that is also running xp

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[Bubba924]

I checked bios and the jumper. They are both right. THis is a real mind buggler.

[harrycary]

Sometimes, by removing all of the jumpers your motherboard will auto-detect the master and subsequent slave drive. Usually the last drive on the IDE cable will be recognized as the master. I'm sure this varies by mobo mfg though.
I did this and than installed a switched jumper on the slave drive(master jumper position). I now run 2 hardrives with 2 different O/Ss.

[balamm]

Duties are not performed for duty's sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty - the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

[Nightwolf]

The only way the second HD could prevent your system from booting is if it was trying to boot from that drive, instead of your primary master (C drive. Are you sure you have the jumpers on both drives set correctly, so one is the master and the other is slave (don't use Cable Select, that sucks)? Your boot drive must be plugged into the far end of the IDE cable, which is then plugged into your Primary IDE port. The slave drive should plug into the middle port on that same cable.

Does your BIOS correctly detect the new drive? Sometimes you need to enter the specs manually.