Can’t boot Secondary IDE Hard Disk

[Vieux Richard]

Have just acquired a Compaq PII 266Mhz for testing purposes. It came with one IDE HD (Disk 1) and no O/S, just some basic DOS commands. I have just installed another IDE HD (Disk 2) with Windows 98 (taken from my PC).
When I install Disk 2 on the Primary IDE controller, the BIOS recognises the drive but the system hangs. When I switch it to the secondary IDE controller and put Disk 1 back on the Primary, the BIOS recognises Disk 2, the system boots up and I can access it as D:
Have checked all the jumper settings for the 2 (different) Maxtor ATA33 HDs. I would like to be able to boot Disk 2 as C: and then install W2K on to Disk 1.

[Greedo]

i could be off base here, but don't you have to set the partition from which you wish to boot to active? i seem to recall some rules about active primary partitions when transferring files to a new hard drive that might apply in this case.
somebody else back me up here

[Vieux Richard]

Thanks Greedo, using fdisk I was unable to make the other disk active, due to some changes in the geometry (?) as advised by Partition Magic. So ended up formatting both disks and installing W2K on one and W98SE on the other.

[bailey]

I belive that was the best way to do it anyway.
clean installation is always the best way to set up any computer.